Quotes, URL's, Links And References-by:older Femmes, Butches, Ftms, Mtfs, Queer, Etc. [Archive] - Page 9

sweetlady

04-01-2006, 01:15 PM

Netherlands: Making the case for euthanasia.

Frans Dijkstra
Trouw

Once again, the Dutch are being called murderers, said Frans Dijkstra in Amsterdam’s Trouw. An Italian minister has willfully misrepresented our infant euthanasia policy to score cheap political points with his home audience. Carlo Giovanardi claimed that "the ideas of Hitler have returned to our continent in the form of Dutch laws that allow sick children to be killed." Such a preposterous allegation is an offense not only to our doctors, but also to survivors of Nazi horrors. Let me "set the record straight." The Netherlands does allow infants to be put to death, but only under very narrow circumstances. Three pediatricians must agree that a baby is "suffering unbearably" and cannot benefit from any treatment, and both parents must sign informed consent. Only then can a doctor take an active measure—rather than a passive one, such as simply withholding treatment—to end a child’s life. This practice is not limited to the Netherlands. It takes place clandestinely in many other European countries, including Italy. But "because of the proximity of the Vatican," Italians cannot openly discuss the subject. It’s time for a Europewide debate on euthanasia. The Dutch shouldn’t be branded baby killers "for being the only country with the courage" to face reality.

United Kingdom: There’s no shame in a face-lift.

Caitlin Moran
The Times

Enough with the uproar against plastic surgery, said Caitlin Moran in the London Times. In the wake of studies showing a rapid increase in face-lifts among the 50-plus set, Britain has been awash in "tut-tutting" comments that such procedures are "morally dubious" because they waste money and surgical expertise for mere vanity. The condemnation is hardly surprising. "Women doing anything is always discussed in terms of its moral dimension," whether it be "working more" or "breeding less." Society, meanwhile, is uninterested in the morality of such typically male pursuits as selling arms to dictatorships that will use them against helpless villagers. Of course, if you’re a feminist who believes that the desire to look pretty is an "artificialconstructimposedonwomenbyapatriarchalopp ressor™" then you will surely see a moral dimension in the decision to opt for a nose job. But since preening is a female trait in just about every culture on the planet, it may be more accurate, as well as kinder, to consider it an innate behavior. It’s hard enough to get older without being judged on our coping mechanisms. So go ahead. "If you’re aging badly, and starting to look like a carrier bag full of cheap mince that’s been kicked down a towpath in the rain, have your face-lift." Consider it your DNA-given right "to be narcissistic."

Mexico: Will migrants spark a new civil-rights era?

Editorial
La Jornada

It’s just like the 1960s, said Mexico City’s La Jornada in an editorial. Americans are marching through the streets by the hundreds of thousands, demanding civil rights. But this time, the civil rights at issue are those of Mexican migrants. Such a backlash has been brewing for years. Ever since the 9/11 terror attacks, it’s been U.S. policy "to criminalize immigration." The Border Patrol doubled and tripled its manpower on the Mexican border and installed "sophisticated equipment" to track potential immigrants. That the effort has been a failure—the number of undocumented people has grown from 8.4 million to 12 million in five years—"means nothing to the authorities." The Bush administration continues to prioritize "security over all else, including human rights." But now ordinary Americans, "activists and religious leaders, as well as celebrities and politicians," have joined the undocumented community in demanding that migrants be recognized as vital contributors to U.S. prosperity. Perhaps these protests will "move beyond the theme of immigration and spark a wider movement" against President Bush. Migrants could be the catalyst for "a revival of civil society in the United States."

Have the Basque separatists really renounced terror?

We want to believe them, said Spain’s Cinco Dias in an editorial. Militant Basque separatists from ETA have at last declared an end to their four-decade terrorist campaign. Three Basque militants, their heads completely covered in white veils topped by black berets, appeared on Basque television to announce a "permanent cease-fire." They said that from now on, ETA would seek "recognition of the rights that belong to us, as a people," through the "democratic process." Spaniards are now abuzz with "equal parts hope, distrust, and caution." Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who has long promised that Basque terror would one day cease, said: "This could be the beginning of the end."

Don’t smother the militants in kisses just yet, said Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine in an editorial. ETA is acting as if it has done a noble and magnanimous thing in announcing its "cease-fire." But these "radical nationalists, throwbacks from another century," have been murdering people for 30 years in the name of their "blood and soil" ideology. The spokeswoman who delivered ETA’s announcement had "not a word of regret for, or even acknowledgement of, the more than 800 victims" of Basque terror. And ETA still wants a separate homeland for Basque speakers in northern Spain and southern France. Prime Minister Zapatero should remain "skeptical" of this latest overture. Remember, ETA has broken promises of cease-fires in the past.

But that was before Spain experienced its own 9/11, said Elizabeth Nash in Britain’s Independent. The viability of terrorism as a "political strategy" died on March 11, 2004, when Islamic radicals blew up four commuter trains in Madrid and killed 192 people. All Spaniards were "sickened" by the crime, and even those who may have previously been sympathetic to the Basque cause would not tolerate any more bloodshed. ETA was forced to recognize that its struggle for independence must henceforth "be advanced only through nonviolent means."

We’ll see, said Isabel San Sebastian in Spain’s El Mundo. The burden of proof rests with "those who have wasted each and every one of the opportunities given them." We know that ETA is weaker than ever, after scores of its operatives have been arrested over the past two years. So it’s certainly plausible that the group has given up violence. But "it has yet to promise to actually give up its weapons." Until ETA disarms, it doesn’t deserve to be treated as a political partner.

Even then, said Juan Pablo Fusi in Spain’s ABC, the Basque region will have a long way to go before it can call itself democratic. Basque nationalism has been "a form of fascism—complete with mass political rituals, worship of the flag and military anthems, exaltation of ultranationalism." Democracy, by contrast, is based on the "individual, not the collective, and not the territory." Only when Basque residents feel as free to oppose independence as they are to support it will we be able to say that the Basque conflict has ended.

(*) (*) Food for thought for those preferring more provocative,"engage your left-brain" stuff rather than cotton candy.;) ;)

Enjoy your weekend, wherever it's being experienced...:)

(f) (f) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the now-awake and "where's my yummers?" Boxer Pup (l) (&)

sweetlady

04-01-2006, 05:26 PM

please vote for my thread if you read and like/love what you read??

There were 5 hearts before....

and...

Maybe there will be again.......(k) (k) (k)

I am going through a very hard time where I need to move over the next 60 days. Friends will know that it is towards a place of my own and I will not be beat again. Physically and/or verbally by what once was my best high school friend from whom I have been subletting. I had to call the police (and very reluctantly) last Wed. - it got so bad.

And I am terrified (!) and awake nights trying to figure out what to do.

If anyone reading this can offer some resources for help.....government type, etc., not personal - I would be most grateful.

I need to move by June 1, 2006. And this lady is terrified since I WILL take Wyatt with me, and not let "no pets" stop my intended progress.

I am so scared right now.

Love,

Sweetlady and Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-02-2006, 06:57 AM

Q U O T E D

9. John C. Dvorak named product strategist

8. Steve and his Oracle pal Larry Ellison go hunting; Larry shoots Steve in the face

7. The iPhone Shuffle: hit a button, call a random number

6. iTunes for Linux

5. Solid gold 30th anniversary Mac: you can't use it, but it sure looks posh

4. A Jobs-branded fashion line, with the ad slogan: "Here's to the pretty ones."

3. Apple Newton starts shipping again. Not with any upgrades, it just starts shipping again

2. Apple buys Disney, Mickey Mouse mascot replaced with Jonathan Ive

1. Steve wears a bowtie again -- over his turtleneck

-- Valleywag's nine least likely 30th anniversary Apple surprises

http://www.valleywag.com/tech/apple/nine-least-likely-appleturns30-surprises-163942.php

Carpe Diem!

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-03-2006, 07:41 AM

If you want to get better - don't say a little prayer

Oliver Burkeman in New York
Saturday April 1, 2006
The Guardian

If a religious person offers to pray for you next time you fall ill, you may wish politely to ask them not to bother. The largest scientific study into the health effects of prayer seems to suggest it may make matters worse.

Two-thirds of Americans and more than a quarter of British people say they pray regularly, but the study, which took almost a decade and cost $2.4m (£1.4m) suggested that they may be wasting their time. It found that patients undergoing heart surgery did no better when they were prayed for by people unknown to them than those who received no prayers. But 59% of those patients who were told they were definitely being prayed for developed complications, compared with 52% of those who had been told it was just a possibility.

Article continues
"Here they are, facing the biggest challenge of their lives, just about to go into the operating suite, and don't know whether they're coming back or not," said Charles Bethea, of the Integris Baptist medical centre in Oklahoma City, a co-author of the study. "And then we have someone come in and introduce themselves as a study coordinator."

The arrival of the "prayer team" may have convinced those patients that their situation was particularly dire, heightening their anxiety, Dr Bethea speculated.

The study, which will be published in the American Heart Journal next week, drew criticisms from religious groups, who argued that science cannot illuminate questions of faith, and from other medical scientists, who said it was a waste of money. "It represents bad science, poor medical care, and it trivialises religion," Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioural medicine at Columbia University, told the Guardian.

He argued that the study was not properly constructed because it was impossible to control for how much prayer any of the 1,800 patients might or might not be receiving from other sources.

Dr Bethea and his colleague, Harvard professor Herbert Benson, emphasised that their investigations had been restricted to "intercessory prayer" by strangers - excluding prayer from family members and oneself.

Praying for oneself has been shown in many studies to be effective.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1744493,00.html

(*) (*) Hmmm.(a) (a)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the napping-in-lap Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-03-2006, 07:43 AM

Posted on Sun, Apr. 02, 2006 Contra Costa Times

Next move could be forays into movies, TV

By John Boudreau
KNIGHT RIDDER

In the '80s, Apple Computer brought the personal computer to the masses.

And in the first few years of the 21st century, the Cupertino company's iPod digital music player has revolutionized how we listen to, buy and tote around our music.

So, what's next? As Apple marked its 30th anniversary Saturday, it is no doubt working on the next innovation it hopes can repeat the staggering success of the iPod.

The company that set out to build computers that, as co-founder Steve Wozniak says, "I would want to use," finds itself in a position to revolutionize digital video, too.

Apple's chic and minimalist iPods define tech fashion and dominate the digital music player market. The legal music download market, meanwhile, has exploded since Apple launched its online iTunes Music Store in 2003.

Still, in looking forward, daunting questions loom: Does Apple still want to be a computer company, or is it morphing into an entertainment and consumer electronics company? Apple seems poised to make such a leap. It sells a gadget that tens of millions of people use daily to listen to music and, increasingly, to watch TV shows and movies. Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs has sold his digital animation company Pixar to Walt Disney and will serve on the entertainment giant's board as its largest individual shareholder.

And Apple's computers are evolving into digital entertainment centers, seamlessly organizing and connecting people's music, video, photos and online lives.

After all, the iPod frenzy won't last forever. Like the law of gravity, the Law of Silicon Valley demands there will be a "next generation." An "upgrade." Something shiny and new that we can't live without.

"The risk is the iPod business they have built is a fad," says American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu. "All empires don't last."

At the center of the Apple empire is its iconic co-founder and chief executive. The darkest era in Apple's history began when he was forced out in 1985, and while the 51-year-old shows no signs of slowing down, can Apple groom a successor and survive without him? Apple is renown for its ability to keep secrets and closely guards its product strategy. The company's campus on Infinite Loop in Cupertino is a cross between a sleek tech campus and an Area 51-like top secret military base, both of which make speculating what the company will do next just that -- speculation.

But it appears ready to roll out new products that will place it in every room of the home and perhaps even become the 21st century's digital distributor for Hollywood.

Observers have long suspected Jobs and Co. are cooking up some sort of device that will merge the home computer and television. At the same time, Jobs has become a Hollywood mogul -- through his breakthrough ability to sell music and TV sitcoms through iTunes. Jobs' seat on the Disney board could further transform how people watch movies, from the big screen to the home screen to the mobile screen.

Whether the quirky company can continue its successful march into the lives, and wallets, of consumers will depend on many factors, including continued vision from Jobs and the ability -- or failure -- of competitors to match the ease of use and cool factor of Apple's iPod.

"They have managed to create business where there was none," says Richard Doherty, an analyst with Envisioneering Group who has kept an eye on Apple since its inception. "There was no personal computer until Apple. There was no digital video business until Apple. Today, the digital living room is a zero-billion-dollar-business. And it will probably stay that way until Apple gets into it."

So far, Apple's obsessive attention to innovation and elegant design has paid off. The iPod-iTunes partnership is a study in simplicity: one click to download music from iTunes, one click to move it to your iPod and a one-click spinwheel to play it.

"I don't mean to sound arrogant, but we take ourselves very seriously," says Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of worldwide iPod marketing. "We think we have a role in the industry. We try to figure out how to do this better. It's not just how do we drive this by the spreadsheet. That's what we are about."

Indeed, Apple was not the first to move into portable music -- remember the Walkman? But it placed its bet on making the experience better. The same is true of its iTunes store. Downloading music has been possible for years (think Napster), but Apple made the deals with music executives to make it simpler -- and legal.

During the downturn in 2000 and 2001, a time when many companies were laying off workers, Apple began pumping more resources into innovation. The company revamped its Macintosh operating system, opened retail stores and developed new software focused on digital music, video and photos.

"And we created this music business, which is now iPod and iTunes," Joswiak says. "We did all those things when everyone was tightening their belts. Now you see we are in a stronger position than some of our competitors."

Apple also made another strategic bet -- it opened its iTunes software, which lets people effortlessly manage their digital music and buy song downloads from the online store, to users of Microsoft Windows computers -- about 95 percent of the computing world.

Still, Apple has kept its iPod ecosystem closed: iPod owners cannot listen to music downloads bought from competing music services on their players. Apple may have to adjust its strategy again in the future, or face the wrath of consumers who want more control over the tunes and videos they buy through iTunes.

And those same music executives who made iTunes possible could find other distributors. Amazon is reportedly working on a music download service, and the record labels have become increasingly disenchanted with Apple's insistence on selling all songs for $.99 per download, preferring more flexibility in pricing or a subscription-based model.

For now, though, it's hard to find fault with the numbers: more than 42 million iPods and a billion songs sold.

"A lot of people throw rocks at Apple for being proprietary," says Gartner analyst Van Baker. "I've got only one word for people who say proprietary is bad: Playstation. Two hundred million units between Playstation 1 and Playstation 2 have been sold," he says of the popular Sony video game console. "It's totally proprietary and it's totally closed. It's hard to argue with that kind of success."

Apple is called many things: arrogant, brilliant, elitist.

It is, in the end, a product company.

"They make cool stuff," says Guy Kawasaki, managing director of Garage Technology Ventures and a board member of FilmLoop. He worked at Apple from 1983 to 1987, and 1995 to 1997. "Sometimes, the cool stuff works. And sometimes, the cool stuff doesn't work."

New products are unveiled with opening-night panache after bloggers post endlessly about what could come next. The rollouts feature stars, such as Bono and Madonna, and sometimes attract celebrities in the audience -- Robin Williams, Gregory Hines, Muhammad Ali. If there is such a thing as a rock star CEO, it is Jobs, whose un-geek trademark jeans and black mock turtleneck is more Hollywood than High Tech.

In February, some 250 reporters and analysts -- attended to by Apple PR people in art-house black -- filed into the company's Town Hall auditorium to witness Jobs announce the company's latest offerings: a high-quality stereo system for the iPod and the latest generation of its "low-cost" computer, the Mac Mini (the Mini starts at $599, and doesn't come with a monitor, keyboard or mouse). Each product was placed on a pedestal and covered with a black cloth before the ritual unveiling.

Apple has always been a bit audacious or, depending on one's perspective, pretentious.

It was founded on April Fool's Day in 1976, around the time Jobs and Wozniak showed off the Apple I to the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto.

That year, Jobs was able to sell 50 of the computers to the Byte Shop in Mountain View before Wozniak, a self-trained electrical engineer, had even built them.

"During 1976, we were showing the Apple II around. We realized it could be a big seller, but we had no money," Wozniak recalled in an interview. "We were doing the Apple I's on total credit. We had no assets. Nothing. The credit was the guy at the store who was buying them from us. He was paying cash on delivery. So he talked to the parts distributors. They were loaning us parts on 30 days credit."

In 1977, the Apple II was the first PC to reach the mainstream. Apple moved into buildings in Cupertino and became one of the fastest-growing corporations in U.S. history.

Two years later, Jobs discovered the first "graphical user interface," or GIU, developed at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. The breakthrough made the computer much easier to master for the average person, who could simply click on a file to view it. It eventually became the foundation for the Macintosh, introduced in 1984.

Apple has been on a 30-year roller-coaster ride that has been endlessly chronicled -- Jobs losing a power struggle to John Sculley and his subsequent ouster; Sculley's relentless focus on the Newton, a predecessor to today's handheld devices, which in turn led to his demise; the company's minute share of the PC market in the face of Windows-based computers; and of course, Jobs' triumphant return to the company.

But longtime Apple watchers say it has learned from its history -- witness the company's recent record revenues of $5.75 billion during the holiday season.

Even Jobs' investment in Pixar gave him insight into how technology and entertainment, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, can come together. At Macworld in 2001, Jobs introduced his vision of the Macintosh being the center of a person's digital lifestyle. But Wozniak says Jobs actually was thinking about this in the mid-'90s, before the Internet became ubiquitous.

Nevertheless, a small army of companies -- Intel, Cisco, AT&T, Microsoft, to name a few -- are trying to stake their claim in your living room, and Apple's spot is far from guaranteed.

"What is it that sets Apple apart from any other tech company? It's not a technology company," says Steve Hayden, vice chairman at Ogilvy & Mather's who was the lead copywriter on Apple's award winning "1984" ad that launched the Mac. "It's a change-the-world company."

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/14246404.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

(^) (^) Apple at 30 years....how time flies...... (^)

:)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-03-2006, 07:45 AM

Music, prayer, promises: Poland marks anniversary of pope's death

(Sunday April 02, 2006 00:59 AM)

KRAKOW, Poland (AFP) - Poland and the rest of the Catholic world commemorates the first anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II, with his successor, Benedict XVI, leading a special prayer service in Rome.

In Poland at 9:37 pm (1937 GMT), the hour of John Paul's death on April 2, 2005, hundreds of thousands of believers at open-air masses will raise flickering candles towards the heavens.

At the same time Pope Benedict will look down on St Peter's Square in Rome and recite the rosary.

Visitors will be able to view exhibitions about the late pontiff's 104 foreign visits and the special relationship he forged with the Jewish people.

In 1986, he became the first pope in history to visit a synagogue. He prayed at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem in 2000, and also several times at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi German death camp in southern Poland where some 1.1 million people died, most of them Jews.

His successor, German-born Benedict, will also pray at Auschwitz-Birkenau when he visits Poland in May.

The tributes will continue into Monday, when Pope Benedict XVI will celebrate mass in Saint Peter's Square.

John Paul died on a Saturday, and commemorations began in earnest in his fomer home of Krakow on Saturday.

At noon, two buglers who sound the hour from the spire of Our Lady's Basilica in the heart of Krakow played "Barka," John Paul II's favourite song.

In homage to the late pope, the buglers' "Barka" will fill the air in Krakow on the first Saturday of each month, at 9:37 pm.

Krakow, the pope's home for four decades as priest, bishop and cardinal, before his surprise election to the papacy in 1978, has been draped in the papal colours of yellow and white, alongside the city's own flag.

Candles flickered in front of what has come to be known as "the pope's window" at the episcopate, from which Cardinal Karol Wojtyla and later Pope John Paul II would speak to Krakow's faithful.

A mosaic of thousands of tiny photographs of ordinary people, worked into a huge portrait of John Paul II, hung on the facade of the episcopate. Underneath were the words: "Thank you JPII."

In the late afternoon, newly installed Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, celebrated mass for the late pope at Wawel Cathedral.

"We can state today that he was truly a prophet of Jesus Christ," Dziwisz, a long-time friend of Wojtyla and John Paul II's devoted personal secretary during his 26-year pontificate, said in his homily.

"We are once again united by our great love and gratitude for John Paul II," he told the faithful gathered for the mass, among them Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz.

Also on Saturday, a Polish-based tribunal hearing testimony into whether the late John Paul II should be beatified wrapped up its investigations, saying several possible miracles that could have been worked by him were being studied.

Proof of one miracle attributed to John Paul II is required before he can be beatified, the first step towards sainthood. A second miracle attributed to his intercession with God would be necessary for full sainthood.

Around Poland, where many credit John Paul II with what some hail as the miracle of bringing down the Iron Curtain and aiding Poland to cast off communism, masses, concerts, film showings and exhibitions recalled the life and achievements of the Polish-born pontiff.

Roman Catholics in the United States meanwhile planned to commemorate the first anniversary of John Paul's death with solemn concerts and special masses.

In New York, two organ concerts were planned for Sunday in the city's Saint Patrick's Cathedral, including one by organist Boguslaw Grabowski of Saint Mary's Basilica in Gdansk, Poland.

In Washington, the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center organized a commemorative mass for Sunday, along with a concert and a lecture honoring the life of the late pope. Visitors will be able to view exhibits about the globetrotting pontiff's 104 foreign visits as pope and the special relationship he forged with the Jewish people.

Cardinal Justin Rigali, archbishop of Philadelphia, was to celebrate a solemn mass on Monday in honor of the late pontiff, for whom he had been a close aide until his death on April 2, 2005.

Special masses were to be held over the weekend in Chicago, as well as in Detroit, Michigan and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

http://uk.news.launch.yahoo.com/dyna/article.html?a=/02042006/323/music-prayer-promises-poland-marks-anniversary-pope-s-death.html&e=l_news_dm

(a) (a)

Sweetlady and Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-03-2006, 07:47 AM

Enterprise agency axes US scheme for student high-flyers

EDDIE BARNES POLITICAL EDITOR

A FLAGSHIP government scheme to help turn bright young Scots into the entrepreneurs of tomorrow has been scrapped as a result of the cash crisis at Scottish Enterprise.

The £1m Tomorrow's Leaders International (TLI) programme, launched just four months ago, was poised to send dozens of youngsters to the US for internships at blue-chip organisations such as the Smithsonian Institute and Kennedy Centre.

But all interviews for the scheme have been cancelled in what TLI's organisers in the States have described as a "travesty".

The revelation is a major embarrassment for the First Minister, Jack McConnell, who flies out to the US today at the head of a team of politicians and officials on a week-long Tartan Day trip costing an estimated £1.4m.

The embarrassment for McConnell is all the greater as he spoke at the TLI pilot launch three years ago promising that students selected for the scheme would "be taking the message right into the heart of corporate America that Scotland is a country brimming with talent".

"I want more Scots to follow their lead," he added.

In fact, the 20 places which had been set up in America for Scottish students to take up from this summer will now lie empty.

Scotland on Sunday has obtained a copy of a letter sent by the organiser of TLI in America, Bob Creighton, to Jack Perry, Scottish Enterprise's chief executive.

"I have been informally advised by colleagues in Scotland that, due to other developments in Scottish Enterprise, there seems to be some possibility that Tomorrow's Leaders International may not now be funded," he wrote on March 26.

"We have made commitments for this year's programme - in good faith and in the name of the First Minister, the Scottish Executive and Scottish Enterprise - to some of Scotland's most important partners in America.

"By initiating the selection process in Scotland, we have also raised the hopes of many young people. It would be a travesty if this excellent programme were to be cancelled for reasons that are not entirely clear."

A spokesman for Scottish Enterprise confirmed on Friday that the application process has now been called off, blaming the current "rationalisation" process at the organisation. "It has been postponed for this year," he added.

In a statement, the quango said: "Scottish Enterprise has to use its limited resources to fund projects that have the biggest impact on the Scottish economy. This involves taking some hard decisions about what we continue doing, what we start doing and what we stop doing.

"Tomorrow's Leaders Programme was part of this process and we will now be meeting with the programme organisers to look at how it may possibly be delivered in the future."

After being contacted by Scotland on Sunday, sources within Scottish Enterprise insisted that the decision to cut the scheme would soon be "reversed". One insider said: "It is a good scheme and it is likely that it will be re-started later this year."

However, the American organisers say the prevarication in Scotland has drained confidence in the plan.

In his letter to Perry, Creighton warned: "The reality is that if funding is cut now, it is difficult to see how we could again build up the goodwill and unquestioning support that the programme now enjoys."

The scheme, which has been running as a pilot in Glasgow for three years, was billed by SE as a chance for some of Scotland's brightest youngsters "to learn from one of the world's most dynamic economies and transfer this knowledge and expertise back to Scotland".

Students on the pilot have been involved in research to find a vaccine for the Sars virus, and have helped to design a new lakefront park in Chicago.

The programme was cut despite a pledge by Perry recently that no projects would be slashed as a result of the current funding crisis.

The quango, which spends £500m a year, has overspent its budget for 2005-06 by £30m and is due to over-spend its accounts by £40m next year. The problem has been caused by managers approving too many costly projects.

TLI may have been cut, according to insiders, because there was no legal contract tying funding down, as there is with many other SE projects.

Enterprise Minister Nicol Stephen has now ordered external accountants to examine SE's books, following a clamour from MSPs.

Alex Neil, the SNP convener of Holyrood's enterprise committee, said: "This makes a complete nonsense of the claim that the reason Scottish Enterprise has a cash crisis is because it has too many good projects.

"How can that be so when they are cutting a brilliant project like this? It is madness."

Murdo Fraser, enterprise spokesman for the Scottish Tories, added: "A project that they praised to the hills has been axed. The assurances we had from the Enterprise Minister that future projects were safe were clearly not very well-informed."

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=506422006

(*) (*) I feel sorry for the kids who would have benefited from the "scheme".:o

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WYBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-03-2006, 07:48 AM

Artist: Jane Siberry with k.d.lang Lyrics

Song: Calling All Angels Lyrics

a man is placed upon the steps, a baby cries
and high above the church bells start to ring
and as the heaviness the body oh the heaviness settles in
somewhere you can hear a mother sing

then it's one foot then the other as you step out onto the road
how much weight? how much weight?
then it's how long? and how far?
and how many times before it's too late?

calling all angels
calling all angels
walk me through this one
don't leave me alone
calling all angels
calling all angels
we're cryin' and we're hurtin'
and we're not sure why...

and every day you gaze upon the sunset
with such love and intensity
it's almost...it's almost as if
if you could only crack the code
then you'd finally understand what this all means

but if you could...do you think you would
trade in all the pain and suffering?
ah, but then you'd miss
the beauty of the light upon this earth
and the sweetness of the leaving

calling all angels
calling all angels
walk me through this one
don't leave me alone
callin' all angels
callin' all angels
we're tryin'
we're hopin'
we're hurtin'
we're lovin'
we're cryin'
we're callin'
'cause we're not sure how this goes

http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/untiltheendoftheworld/callingallangels.htm

(a) (a)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-03-2006, 07:50 AM

Chena Hot Springs Resort: Fairbanks, AK

http://www.chenahotsprings.com/

(c) (c) ........off to make some fresh coffee soon.......:)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady and Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-03-2006, 07:51 AM

www.podcastalley.com

www.notesfromspain.com

www.viviglow.com (Junkies can get their Jon Krakauer fix from the Mount Everest Podcast)

www.budgettravelonline.com

Lonely Planet's "travelcast": www.lonelyplanet.com

Enjoy!!

(k) (k) 's & ({) (}) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-06-2006, 09:56 PM

1) The River Wild (1994)

A family vacation with parents on the verge of divorce sounds like enough trauma … but throw in a few fugitives, and a simple rafting trip takes an ominous dive into frightening waters. Meryl Streep is the mom and river guide whom the baddies -- Kevin Bacon and crew -- forcibly enlist to find them safe passage. It's up to the stranded dad to get the family out of danger. This film precedes director Curtis Hanson's acclaimed L.A. Confidential.

Cast:
Meryl Streep, Kevin Bacon, Joseph Mazzello, David Strathairn, John C. Reilly

(*) (*) (*) Meryl Streep rocked. David Strathairn was as always a terrific character actor. I gave it four stars at netflix.

(~) Reviews:

This was an exciting movie to watch! The "Gauntlet" scene did not quite live up to the hype as being the big scary ride....but nonetheless, it was still thrilling to watch. Especially for someone who would never dream of rafting! The scenery is beautiful. The whole movie takes place on the river as a family is forced to take 2 criminals down the river. Nice subplots and good acting all around!

(~)

This is Hollywood formula 101. Yet, it's the formula done right. Effective, with fun thrills aplenty- "The River Wild" is a perfect rent for an evening of popcorn entertainment. Kevin Bacon makes the movie. His performance really elevates the badly written, inconsistant character, Wade. Bacon somehow actually almost turns him into a memorable villian. Meryl Streep is also quite good. Curtis Hanson, pre-"LA Confidential" break-out, directs the action and suspense with precision. The major flaw is the kid, Roarke. What an irratating little brat! (Joseph Mazzello was one of the most annoying child stars ever-If you didn't like him in "Jurassic Park", you'll absolutely hate him here.) Anyway, John C. Reilly rules!

(*) (*) I agree about the kid.....;)

2) Just Cause (1995)

Hidden deep in the Everglades, evidence that could set an innocent man free languishes -- but will it matter? When a death row inmate calls on a Harvard law professor (Sean Connery) to prove his innocence 8 years after a crime, the evidence doesn't interest the police. Can Connery overcome the system and catch the real killer? A stellar cast (Laurence Fishburne, Ed Harris) makes this nail-biter a must-see.

Cast: Sean Connery, Laurence Fishburne, Blair Underwood, Ed Harris, Kate Capshaw, Ruby Dee

(*) (*) (*) Some scenes scared the sh*t out of me. I would not recommend watching alone and with the lights off late at night.;)

(~) Reviews:

If you liked Cape Fear, you will really enjoy this one. The actors were excellent, with the best I have seen from Ed Harris as a pschyopathic serial killer. It's just a great thriller!

(~) It really keeps your interest. When you think you know who did it you are surprised at the ending.

(S) (S) (S)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-06-2006, 10:02 PM

Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story (2005)

Down-and-out horse trainer Ben Crane (Kurt Russell) is given an equally broken-down (but once great) racehorse, Sonya, as severance pay. It will take the unwavering faith and determination of Ben's daughter, Cale (Dakota Fanning), to bring these two damaged souls together in a quest to win the Breeders' Cup Classic. Elisabeth Shue, Oded Fehr and Kris Kristofferson co-star in this heartwarming tale directed by John Gatins.

Cast: Kurt Russell, Dakota Fanning, Elisabeth Shue, Kris Kristofferson, Freddy Rodriguez, Luis Guzman, Oded Fehr, David Morse, Ken Howard, Frank Hoyt Taylor

(*) (*) (*) (*) (*) (l) (l)

(~) If you liked "Seabiscuit" and don't mind the type of movie that you can pretty much guess what happens next, you will probably like this. The acting more than makes up for the minor disappointments in the story. Not only doesn't Curt Russell put a foot wrong, he shows real chemistry with Dakota Fanning, who plays his daughter. You buy their relationship without a qualm. Also blending in seamlessly is Kris Kristofferson as the crotchety grandfather and Elisabeth Shue as the long-suffering but supportive mother. Best of all, three actors that I like a lot were in this and I didn't know it before going to see the film: Freddy Rodriguez, Luis Guzman, and David Morse.

(~) It was predictable....I loved it! LOL. Although you know exactly what is going to happen before it does, Dreamer is uplifting. This is the first movie I've ever gone to where people clap and whistle at the end! If you like the typical underdog story...don't miss this one! You don't have to love horses to enjoy this.

(~) Dreamer is one of them movies you can watch over and over and don't ever get tired of it.

(S) (S)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-06-2006, 10:13 PM

April 2, 2006

Explorer

Monument Valley: Endless Earth, Infinite Sky

By TIMOTHY EGAN

WE know it from the movies as John Ford's favorite stage. We know it from Willa Cather's description — "Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world, but here the earth was the floor of the sky"— defying the notion that it cannot be contained in words. And we know it from the pictures, those thousand-foot spires bathed in the kind of light that turn an amateur into Ansel Adams, the skies full of drama. It looks so familiar.

And yet Monument Valley feels like the most foreign of places, even exotic — if such things can still be said about a large piece of our map. It is dry, oversize, intemperate. Nothing else outside the Southwest looks even remotely like it. It is Navajo Nation land, something that is clear from the native chat of shop clerks or the radio station doing basketball game summaries in a language the Japanese could never decipher during World War II.

Monument Valley is full of Europeans, busloads from Italy and Germany and France, trying to experience our Eiffel Tower, our Colosseum. They take pictures of themselves on horseback, posed in front of a mesa that looks to be half the size of St. Peter's Basilica. But where are the Americans? On a recent visit, I was chased around the valley floor by lightning and dodged a flash flood when a dry canyon turned red and swollen with runoff. I took a frigid hike under the light of a full moon. I watched the sky blush a deep pink behind those sandstone skyscrapers, and then go dark; I felt like applauding. It was like being in a theater at the end of a film. "Bravo," someone shouted.

The rare sight was another American. So perhaps Monument Valley, the stranger in our backyard, deserves a second look — or a first.

You approach Monument Valley from nowhere: nothing else is really close. Phoenix is more than 300 miles, Las Vegas is more than 400. Its remoteness — in my mind — is part of the draw, and may explain the surfeit of Europeans, who at home have nearly everything except empty horizons that go from sunrise to sunset.

I drove from Las Vegas, passing through some of the oddest places in the United States: the scary polygamous compound of Colorado City on the Arizona-Utah border and the otherworldly formations of slickrock in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the canyon draws where herds of pillow-shaped sheep would suddenly appear, as if in a dream. One night, I stayed in the secular setting of Kanab, Utah, where I drank Polygamy Porter — a fine beer — over dinner with a man who told me he used to have three wives.

If you buy a government map, you'll see the color-coded ownership along the way: the big, empty acreage run by the Bureau of Land Management, the higher elevations of juniper trees and pines of the Forest Service, the deep trough of the National Park Service's Grand Canyon, and then the biggest landlord in this part of northern Arizona: the tribes. The Navajo reservation, at 16 million acres, is larger than 10 of the states. It is, by far, the biggest concentration of Indian country within the United States, and holds the largest tribe, with a population approaching 250,000, according to tribal estimates.

The largest town close to Monument Valley is Kayenta, Ariz., a bustling Navajo commercial center. The megascenery is just up the road. As you approach, the big monoliths appear in the distance, shimmering like the Emerald City — but salmon and rust-colored. What you hear, or don't hear, seems indigenous to this place that the ages have whittled away: a cadenced thunder out of some far corner of the horizon, winds that sneak up on you, and no cellphone rings.

The West would be empty of tourists without its myths. When truth and myth collide, the admonition of early Western pulp writers was, print the myth. As much as possible, the proprietors of Western tour stops sell the myth: the cowboys who seem to spring from Charles Russell paintings, working at Home Depot by day, walking the streets of Tombstone at night; or the New Age peddlers in the high air of Taos or Santa Fe, selling a whiff of Georgia O'Keeffe with every crystal and salt bath.

But in Monument Valley, the mythic narrative is shared. Yes, John Wayne slept there. And shot other men on film there. And fell in love there. See: "Stagecoach," the first John Ford western shot in Monument Valley, circa 1939. Or "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," from 1949. Or better yet, "The Searchers," from 1956.

The Navajos allow the John Wayne story to exist as a curious asterisk; after all, he portrayed Indian killers. But they express an appreciation of Ford for his passion for their land.

The Anglo part of the story is concentrated at Goulding's Lodge, a hotel and museum about two miles off Highway 163, the main road to the valley. Without the Gouldings —Harry and Mike, married but not Brokeback Mountain cowboys, for Mike was a Western gal with an odd nickname — Monument Valley would probably be just another anonymous cluster of wind-sculptured monoliths. While trying to run a trading post at the depths of the Great Depression, Harry Goulding heard that a Hollywood director was looking for the perfect Western backdrop for his next oater. Goulding showed up at Ford's office with pictures of Monument Valley, and after a three-day wait, won him over. At least that's the story they tell at Goulding's. Print the myth.

"Stagecoach" was the first of the Ford and Wayne collaborations that would use the old Goulding tent camp as its headquarters and Monument Valley as its cinematic canvas. The setting is jaw-dropping: at the base of a 700-foot-high mesa, called Big Rock Door, with views looking down to the valley. The Navajo run the 30,000-acre tribal park that encompasses virtually all the major sites, roughly 40 pinnacles, buttes and mesas. But it is better not to count, or in any way try to quantify Monument Valley. The place is all about expanse: earth and sky in endless projection.

Park brochures explain that alcohol is prohibited on Navajo land, and that Monument Valley is a living landscape, not a frozen shank of scenery, with real people trying to make a living around the valley. You can take pictures of people, but only after asking permission; a gratuity is expected. Off-trail hiking is not allowed without a hired guide. If the Navajo seem unfriendly or fail to make eye contact, a park ranger told me, it is not because of 500 years of cultural genocide and a string of broken promises dating back to "hello" from Columbus. Well, maybe that has something to do with it, but eye contact with strangers is considered impolite.

The park interpreters are Navajo. The story they tell is about "the valley between the rocks," a home once to the Anasazi, who left their curious marks on the rock walls and abandoned dwellings, a mystery set in stone from 700 years ago. The Navajo are relatively recent, arriving several hundred years ago. When the Spanish introduced horses and sheep to the Southwest, they provided the impetus for the Navajo to flourish and spread throughout parts of three states that now comprise their reservation.

I was there during a tempestuous few days of weather, which was perfect; I would prefer to see the valley after a dusting of snow, or standing against the full fury of an electrical storm. Rain squalls and hail sent people scurrying inside for cover. And then, just as quickly, the clouds parted, and a rainbow — a full arc across the valley — appeared. We all hurried outside, where it was combat photography, elbow-to-elbow. I spoke to some Italians, dressed nattily if inappropriately in dashing scarves and corduroy pants. They were on the standard Euro-tour of the Southwest: Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley. The biggest surprise was the valley. They said they expected the equivalent of a Spaghetti Western backdrop, a hard, mute land where Clint Eastwood could squint and spit. But they found — to their delight — that Monument Valley was alive, three-dimensional, forcing visitors to stay on their feet.

There are two options for experiencing the main part of the valley. One is to hire a guide and tour the big-rock sites on foot, horseback or open-aired vehicle. The other is to visit on your own, driving the 17-mile dirt road that loops around the valley floor. I chose the self-guided tour, but first, spent an afternoon exploring some of the few marked trails. On the 3.2-mile loop of the Wildcat Trail, going through the lower reaches of the valley, you learn there is much more to Monument Valley than rock towers sprouting from the earth. The area is not an easy place for things to grow, with its high-elevation, piercing winds and less then 10 inches of annual rain. What takes hold looks tough and gnarly: bristly yucca, wind-bent juniper trees, some more than a century old. But as cool as these floral underdogs were, it was hard for me to take my eyes off the bigger prize — a monolith standing in pure gravity-defiance, coated in streaks of desert varnish. Showy, yes. But so is the Empire State Building.

Late in the day, just before dusk, the skies cleared and the valley sentinels cast long shadows across the expanse of Indian land. With the sun at low angle just before it disappeared, this was the magic hour.

The major spires, mesas, and buttes all have names: The Mittens, Elephant Butte, North Window, Totem Pole, the Thumb and so on. There's a rock that looks like an owl (Owl Rock), and arches that look like eyes, (the Spectacles). Inevitably, we see them through an anthropomorphic lens.

On a second day, I drove the slow-poke route over the red-sand road that winds along the valley floor. Descending from the visitor's center, you come face to face with the two Mittens — East and West, as they are unimaginatively labeled. If anything defines the valley, it is this pair. They catch the first and last light of the day, and never look quite the same at any time. Some people think staring at rock is like watching a toenail grow. But these formations invite all kinds of speculative thought. Why are they shaped just so? Why are they still standing? How long have they been there?

Monument Valley is not really a valley, but an upwarp of sedimentary rock that is at least 260 million years old, surrounded by sentinels that have yet to fully erode. The floor itself is more than a mile high, part of the 130,000 square-mile Colorado Plateau. Sandstone is easily eroded, and the wind, rain, cycles of frost and heat have been at work, cracking and chiseling the valley to its present form.

Geologic descriptions can fail even geologists. Writing a report from the area in 1880, Clarence Dutton tried to define the colors: "They are deep, rich and variegated, and so luminous are they, that light seems to glow or shine out of the rock rather than to be reflected from it."

I agree with him on the shining part. During my stay, I never had to wait long for the light to change; I no sooner left one view of rocks bathed in rich, afternoon sunshine than I turned a corner and found myself facing a thunderhead, all bruised and purpled—with only a single bolt of light shining down on one of the mesas.

There were a couple of photo-op bottlenecks on the valley floor, where people clustered at scenic backdrops, or posed on horses. At one point, touring vans pulled into a scenic stop that I had to myself for the last hour or so, John Ford Point. A couple dozen German tourists emerged from the vans, sizing up the landscape, cameras whirring. They seemed to know every scene from Ford's filmography. As the lone Yank at that perch in Monument Valley, I never felt more American.

If You Go

HOW TO GET THERE

Monument Valley, a long, full day's drive from either Las Vegas or Phoenix, is on the Navajo Indian Reservation, which means there are restrictions against sales of alcohol and off-trail hiking without a guide, and it has its own time zone, Mountain Daylight Savings Time, an hour ahead of the rest of Arizona from April through October. Flagstaff, Ariz., and Durango, Colo., are closer, and can be reached by connected flights from Denver or Phoenix.

WHERE TO STAY

There is no place to stay or eat within the tribal park itself. And there is no water in the valley, so visitors should always bring extra fluids, whether on foot or in the car. For lodging nearby:

Goulding's Lodge, just across Highway 163, has 62 rooms with views back at Monument Valley. www.gouldings.com. (*) (*) I stayed here a few times and it's very nice.(*) (*)

In Kayenta, the closest town, about 24 miles from the valley, the Best Western Wetherill Inn, on Highway 163, has 54 rooms, done in Southwestern décor. Rooms are frequently reserved well in advance by tour groups. (*) (*) I stayed here only ONCE since it is on a heavily traveled road (161, I think) with many 18-wheelers - which kept me up all night.(*) (*)

There is camping available year round, with limited amenities, just off the visitor center at the entrance to Monument Valley Tribal Park. The Mitten View Campground has 99 sites.

The only full-service restaurant near the valley is at Goulding's, the Stagecoach Dining Room. Nice views from the red rock perch, and Navajo tacos are a specialty.

(*) (*) <SIGH> Navajo tacos..........exquisite! The thought of them are making my mouth water! The place at the entrance to the driveway for Monument Valley that sells them gives out the recipe for Navajo fry bread - and has floor to ceiling photos sent in by people from all over the world who have been there, ate, got the recipe and then went home and made them - had their photo taken and mailed it into the Navajo who own the tiny restaurant.(l)

(k) (k) 's

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-09-2006, 04:11 PM

April 9, 2006

In Search of the Vortex Vibe

By DWIGHT GARNER NyTimes

ON a late afternoon in Sedona, with the sinking sun beaming a powdery light over the mustard-red buttes, spires and mesas that surround the city like the ruins of fortress walls, everything looks better than good. Even the scenes that are banished from the postcards — the time-share developments, the trinket shops, the clusters of poky tourists — pick up an otherworldly glow. Those paunchy and ponytailed local hippies? All of a sudden, they're glamorous: it's as if they've been lit by Annie Leibovitz for a Rolling Stone cover circa 1978.

A few years ago, USA Today called Sedona the most beautiful place in America. At sundown, that doesn't begin to cover it. And it's not just the views. There's a vibe in the air, something not quite audible, a kind of metaphysical dog whistle that calls people out to have a look around and to try to feel something that, if you're not a committed New-Age pilgrim, is hard to put into words. Nowhere else in this country does a natural setting feel so much like the inside of a soaring pantheistic cathedral.

I wanted to feel something, too, even though — full disclosure — I lack the spiritual gene. I now have proof of this. I had my "aura" photographed in Sedona. It's a good city for doing things like that. There are more places here to buy crystals, incense and healing stones than there are places to purchase, say, a bag of ice or a hammer. The friendly man who read my "aura colors" told me, for $47, what I pretty much already knew: that I'm a little bit stressed-out and that I don't believe in much of anything (beyond the value of a cold dry martini before dinner). Many thanks, amigo.

Somewhat inexplicably, though, I found myself on my first evening in Sedona standing on a hill called Mystic Vista, taking in the mind-bending views and trying to soak up some "vortex" energy. Sedona is famous for its so-called vortex sites, spots where the earth's energy is supposedly increased, leading to self-awareness and various kinds of healing. (Think of them as spiritual hot tubs without the water.)

I'd taken a New Age jeep tour with a company called Earth Wisdom. Four of us leapt out of the jeep and made the short hike up to Mystic Vista: me, a sixtyish guide named Larry Sprague and two long-haired seekers, a husband and wife from Arkansas. Once we were up there, we did some things that embarrassed me. Mr. Sprague hugged a tree. We all dowsed. In hushed tones, Mr. Sprague told us about ancient Native American rituals and the vision quests he'd been on.

I wasn't feeling the vortex vibes, or much of anything else. But at sundown, the guy from Arkansas brought out a drum and starting tapping on it, Iron John-style. As if on cue, Larry-the-tour-guide pulled out a wooden flute and began accompanying him, playing cryptic Native American-inspired riffs. Anyplace else, this improvised duet would have made me flee back down the mountain. Up here, it sounded surprisingly groovy. It was a Sedona moment. I felt like I'd arrived.

THE whole history of America after the Civil War, Alfred Kazin once wrote, paraphrasing the essayist John Jay Chapman, can be condensed like this: it's "the story of a railroad passing through a town, and then dominating it." In the recent history of Sedona, that dominating railroad has sometimes seemed to have been a kind of star-spangled, Robert Altmanesque New Age parade.

It arrived here in force in 1987. That was the year of the Harmonic Convergence when believers flocked to mystical places across the planet, hoping for a global awakening of harmony and love. Some 5,000 of these believers crammed into Sedona. (It may or may not be a coincidence that Stevie Nicks was born only two hours away.) A few hundred of them stood in front of a formation called Bell Rock, waiting for its lid to open and reveal a U.F.O.

No flying saucer emerged, but word about this place began to spread.

"Even today, if you walked into a cafe and asked how many people had been adducted by aliens," one long-time resident, the writer Eve Conant, told me, "I suspect one in 10 would raise their hands." A popular Sedona diner is called Red Planet, where alien kitsch decorates the walls and, at night, you can drink a "Mothership Margarita" and bathe in the intense pinkish glow cast by neon lights.

The New Age crowd was assimilated into Sedona with a surprising lack of friction. "These people are interesting, and they don't bother anyone," said Ivan Finley, Sedona's mayor in the late 1990's. "And how can you quarrel with them? Even for those of us who don't dance in circles, it's hard to live here and not be a little bit spiritual. It's a humbling place."

Still, the United States Forest Service sometimes complains about the stone medicine wheels that people build — and leave — in the wilderness.

The New Age migrants were not the first to be drawn to this mystical place. Native American tribes, including the Yavapai and later the Tonto Apache, were drawn there as early as 1300 A.D. They were driven off the land by the United States Army in the 1870's after gold was discovered in nearby Prescott. (You can find well-preserved cave paintings and rock art all around Sedona. The Palatki Ruins, a few miles out of town, are especially good.)

Sedona took its name, in 1902, from the given name of the wife of Carl Schnebly, an early postmaster. He'd initially wanted to call the place "Schnebly Station," but Schnebly was, perhaps fortunately, too long for a postage cancellation stamp. (It's hard to imagine, more than a century later, a minivan named the Kia Schnebly.)

The more recent influx of big money — Al Pacino owns a house — and skyrocketing housing prices do have a lot of local people worried, however. "Sedona is definitely becoming a place for the haves, not the have-nots," Mr. Sprague tells visitors, in a weary voice, on his jeep tour.

Yet the best thing about Sedona — especially in the off-season — is that it feels like the small town that it really is. The city's year-round population is still only about 11,000, a number that's swollen by the more than 3 million tourists who visit every year, mostly in the summer. The number of high-end resorts may be increasing, too, but Sedona still feels, most of the time, pleasantly poky. This isn't Aspen. There's a tasteful, turquoise-arched McDonald's on the main street here but no Louis Vuitton outlets in sight.

"This is still the kind of place where, when you go to the grocery store, you know a lot of people," Ms. Conant said.

I'd come to Sedona with my wife and two young children in early February, the quiet season. Temperatures can drop below freezing at night but the sun warms things up nicely during the day. (This year was far warmer, and far drier, than usual.) The traffic jams that beset the city in the summer were almost nonexistent.

Even in February, though, Sedona can be a tough place to drive. The views are so stupendous that rubbernecking tourists, gazing upward at the red rocks, swerve crazily across the medians.

We were probably swerving, too, as we entered the city. We'd flown into Phoenix, two hours south of Sedona, late the night before. We got out of Phoenix early and spent the morning in Jerome, a terrifically crusty historic mining town that clings to a mountainside about 30 miles west of Sedona.

Friends had told us not to miss the abandoned Gold King Mine, now a rambling outdoor graveyard of rusting old mining equipment. They were right. This place may be the most perfectly unfussy museum left in America. For a few dollars, you can walk the grounds — it's like touring the ghostly, hulking ruins of the early American industrial age. The children loved the rabbits and chickens that run free there, and the penned-up goats that nibble pellets out of your hand.

Just outside Jerome, in nearby Cottonwood, we made a U-turn when we spied a roadside taco wagon next to the Verde Hay Market ("Ranch and Vet Supplies — We Grow our Own Hay"). Little did we know that these killer tacos, slathered with grilled jalepeños and onions and thin radish slices, were the best Southwestern food we'd see for the next four or five days. Sedona has some good places to eat, mostly of the eclectic American variety (crusted this, braised that) you can find almost anywhere. But the traveling foodie who seeks sharp authentic regional flavors here is going to be disappointed.

IF you want a feel for old Sedona, show up for breakfast, as we did on our first morning, at the Coffee Pot restaurant ("Home of the Famous 101 Omelets"), a place so popular with local folk that you may have to park in the mall parking lot across the street and scamper across a busy highway to get there. It's dinnertime equivalent is Cowboy Club Grille & Spirits, where you can follow an appetizer of rattlesnake skewers with a buffalo burger while taking in the cowboy memorabilia that's spread across the walls.

After a hefty breakfast at the Coffee Pot, take a walk downtown, where you quickly get a sense of this city's contradictions. The soaring red rocks rise above clusters of mostly tasteful housing developments and a downtown that's lined with strip malls. (Beware the storefronts with signs saying "visitor's information" that are actually full of aggressive time-share salesmen.)

One of the best things to do in Sedona while you're getting your bearings is to take a jeep tour of the surrounding landscape. Most of the guides are very knowledgeable about the area's history and its flora and fauna, and it's a chance to scout for the best hiking trails.

In addition to the Earth Wisdom tour I took, I climbed aboard the popular "Broken Arrow" tour run by the Pink Jeep Tours company, a local institution. My children came too, and they screamed (mostly with delight) almost the whole way: these jeeps go over rocks and up inclines that you would have thought were impossible. The trails are so demanding that, according to Pink Jeep, Goodyear frequently supplies the tour company with free tires for testing. Adults will find that their backsides take a mighty pounding on this two-hour tour, but it's worth it; the views are extraordinary. The other good news: Pink Jeep and most of the other jeep-tour companies are seriously conservation-minded: they stick to the approved trails and are quick to alert the Forest Service about jeeps or motorbikes that don't.

This tour gives you a good sense of why Hollywood, in the era of westerns, was so taken with Sedona. Among the movies made here: "Riders of the Purple Sage" (1931), John Wayne's "Angel and the Badman" (1947) and the James Stewart movie "Broken Arrow" (1950).

Unlike my wife, who whiled away hours in solo hiker heaven on the area's terrific trails, I'm pretty lazy. As she discovered, Sedona has more than 100 hiking trails, and it's hard to pick a bad one. I did take one serious hike on the deservedly well-known Boynton Canyon Trail, part of which leads up to a spire called Kachina Woman, which some people think supplies the Canyon's mellow, shimmering energy.

There's so much to do in Sedona, between the hiking, the jeep tours and shopping excursions at places like Tlaquepaque, a sprawling arts-and-crafts village on the city's south side, that it's easy to burn out. After two days of exploring and one night at the Matterhorn Inn, an inexpensive hotel in the downtown shopping district, we were more than ready for some R & R.

We found it at the appropriately-named Enchantment Resort, and its accompanying Mii Amo Spa, both tucked snugly into Boynton Canyon. This place is like a pueblo-style college campus, with rooms spread across several acres and easy access to swimming pools, hot tubs and restaurants, all of them with spectacular views.

Enchantment doesn't come cheaply.

But it's easy to lose yourself here: there's "Camp Coyote" for kids to attend during the daytime, and at night Enchantment provides baby-sitters.

We spent a lot of time at the preternaturally beautiful spa. There's a room called the Crystal Grotto to sit in and meditate. There are slips of paper and pencils outside the grotto. You write your worries on a piece of the paper and drop it into a basket. Later these are burned, releasing your cares. It's worth a try, right? So I scribbled something about my credit card not being declined and tossed it in.

At the spa's restaurant and juice bar, everything on the menu has the letters V, P, or K after it — for "Vata pacifying food," "Pitta pacifying food" or "Kapha pacifying food." I still have no idea what those things are. But the fruit smoothie I drank, with added echinacea and ginkgo biloba, did ward off my oncoming cold, one that had already flattened my children.

There are more types of cutting-edge massages, facials and yoga programs available here than you thought existed. And it you want a past-life regression session, a psychic massage, a "palm reading for empowerment" or a tarot card reading, you've come to the right place.

Enchantment is serious about pampering its guests, and I recommend a stay here. Even here, though, the food is only vaguely Southwestern and occasionally mediocre. (An order of tacos came in bland crunchy shells that reminded me of my high school cafeteria. In the morning, the coffee is so weak that — as Woody Guthrie once sang about Depression-era stew — you could read a magazine right through it.)

Oh well. As a friend who'd grown up near Sedona told me: "This is a place to cleanse oneself, not pollute oneself. A place to shed, not gain."

We did leave Sedona feeling cleansed and yearning for a return visit. But anyone whose aura is still out of whack after a week in Sedona can, before leaving, drop into a New Age trinket shop and buy something called "Vortex in a Can."

According to the label, the contents have been "humanely gathered during the full lunar eclipse by nonsmoking vegetarians."

Crack it open and take a deep breath.

Finding the Enchantment

GETTING THERE

You can fly from New York City to Phoenix on most major airlines although many flights require changing planes. JetBlue (www.jetblue.com) has a direct flight every evening from Kennedy Airport (with a red-eye return trip). Sedona is a two-hour drive north from Phoenix; the Grand Canyon is another two-and-a-half hours north from Sedona.

WHERE TO STAY

Sedona is full of well-run idiosyncratic hotels in all price ranges. It's hard (though not impossible) to find a room without a remarkable view. The Enchantment Resort and Mii Amo Spa, www.enchantmentresort.com, in Boynton Canyon is, well, enchanting. Many rooms have fireplaces.

El Portal Sedona, www.innsedona.com, in the historic arts district is another good bet. Each room here has a different rustic-chic décor.

The Saddle Rock Ranch, www.saddlerockranch.com, is in a remodeled 1920's-era ranch-style home; Barry Goldwater was a regular visitor.

The Forest Houses Resort, www.foresthousesresort.com, is a series of cabins along Oak Creek. You'll feel happily far from civilization; its rooms have no televisions or phones. The Forest Houses Web site warns about the small animals you'll see around and the harmless mice and spiders that occasionally sneak into rooms. "There is no extra charge for these critters," it explains.

At the no-frills Matterhorn Inn, on the Web at www.matterhornlodge.com, 230 Apple Avenue, in Sedona's uptown shopping district.

WHERE TO EAT

The homey Coffee Pot Restaurant, 2050 West Highway 89A, is the "Home of the Famous 101 Omlets" and a local favorite.

The local hippie intelligensia hangs out at Raven Heart Coffee, www.ravenheartcoffee.net. There are two locations in Sedona; both have strong brew and Wi-Fi.

At Cowboy Club Grille & Spirits, 241 North Highway 89A, www.cowboyclub.com, there's cowboy gear on the walls and roomy booths, not to mention good margaritas, rattlesnake skewers and buffalo burgers. Children will like the Red Planet Diner, 1655 West Highway 89A, where flying saucer kitsch decorates the walls.

It's hard to find authentic Southwestern food in Sedona. There are plenty of good Continental or American-style restaurants: the Yavapai Restaurant at the Enchantment Resort, and René at Tlaquepaque, www.rene-sedona.com, which serves French food. In our quest for good Southwestern or Tex-Mex, we settled for Javelina Cantina.. The margaritas, burritos and fish tacos are quite good.

Dwight Garner, senior editor ofthe Book Review, writes the weekly "Inside the List" column.

(*) (*) Been here many, many times! Even stayed for periods of time during the early to mid-1990's when I was guest-lecturing at NAU in Flagstaff. The commute up Oak Creek Canyon is spectaular - although driving back down from Flagstaff was scary when the roads got icy. A few times I stayed over at a B&B close to campus near Macy's Cafe, (superb (c) (c) ) and expresso brownies....:P :|

Carpe Diem!

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-09-2006, 04:14 PM

April 8, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Divine Right of Bushes

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

So the aide turns out to have been loyally following his leader's dictates, rather than going around the boss's back to peddle secret information.

Scooter is a "good Judas," as it turns out, just as Judas himself was, according to a 1,700-year-old Christian manuscript found in the Egyptian desert that asserts that Jesus wanted Judas to betray him, so he entrusted his disciple with special intelligence.

"You can see how early Christians could say, if Jesus' death was all part of God's plan, then Judas's betrayal was part of God's plan," Dr. Karen King, a professor of the history of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, told The Times.

Since President Bush seems to see his mission in Iraq as part of God's plan, he must have assumed that getting Scooter Libby to leak parts of a classified document on Iraq to rebut Joe Wilson's charge about a juiced-up casus belli was part of God's plan.

When other officials leak top-secret stuff — even in cases where the whistle-blowers feel they are illuminating unlawful acts — they are portrayed by the White House as traitors who should be investigated and fired.

After The Times broke the story about the president allowing unauthorized snooping in America, W. was outraged. The F.B.I. and Justice Department were sicced on the leakers. "Revealing classified information," W. huffed, "is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country."

Really, W. should fire himself. He swore to look high and low for the scurrilous leaker and, lo and behold, he has himself in custody. Since the Bush administration is basically a monarchy, he should pass the crown to Jenna. She couldn't do worse than this bunch of airheads and bullies.

Patrick Fitzgerald filed court papers indicating that Scooter testified that in 2003, when the White House was getting rattled by the failure to find W.M.D. and by criticism from a former diplomat on the margins of the war scheme, the president authorized Dick Cheney to authorize Scooter to make a one-sided dump of classified information about Saddam's arsenal to The Times's Judy Miller.

Scooter was so concerned about the propriety of the deal that he checked with the vice president's lawyer, David Addington, before he spilled. Addington, whose politics are to the right of Louis XVI, said, go right ahead. Now Black Adder has Scooter's job. Coincidence?

The Bushies once more showed incompetence by creating this elaborate daisy-chain leak and giving it to the one person in journalism who had been roped off from writing about the prewar intelligence, while her editors sorted out problems with her past W.M.D. coverage. Judy never authored an article about what Scooter gave her, either that intelligence or the identity of the woman whom she wrote down in her notebook as "Valerie Flame." (Stripper or spy?)

W. subscribes to the Nixonian theory that when a president does it, it's not illegal — or maybe it's the divine right of kings. God has been pretty active in Republican politics lately: Tom DeLay said God told him to drop out of his re-election race.

If the administration were seriously trying to declassify something in the national interest, wouldn't it have President Bush explain his decision or have his Scottish terrier yip it out from the podium, rather than having Scooter whisper it in Judy's ear?

Instead, sounding very Lewis Carroll, the White House claims that when the president leaks something secret, it's not secret anymore. It's the Immaculate Declassification: intelligence is declassified by passing it on to a friendly reporter.

"The president believes the leaking of classified information is a very serious matter," Scott McClellan said. "And I think that's why it's important to draw a distinction here. Declassifying information and providing it to the public, when it is in the public interest, is one thing. But leaking classified information that could compromise our national security is something that is very serious. And there is a distinction." And thank goodness we have a White House that gets that distinction. Democrats who don't, he sniffed, are guilty of "crass politics."

If W. wants the information out, it's good for the country to make it public. If W. doesn't want the information out, it's bad for the country to make it public. L'état, c'est moi.

That's how we got mired in the Iraq war in the first place. The administration ruthlessly held back classified information that contradicted its bogus case for war, and leaked classified information that supported it.

The Bushies keep trying to manipulate reality, but reality bites back. That's not only crass politics. It's lethal politics. L'état, c'est mess.

(*) I just started reading Mareen's "Are Men Necessary?" last night. It was difficult to put down.....she is THAT good a writer....(S) (S)

Have a lovely Sunday evening, all.

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-09-2006, 04:16 PM

Vermont Democrats Back Bush Impeachment

Saturday, April 8, 2006

(04-08) 14:39 PDT Randolph, Vt. (AP) --

Leaders of the state Democratic Party voted Saturday to urge Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush.

The vote makes Vermont's Democratic Party committee the fifth to do so, following New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, party officials in Vermont said.

Committee member Margaret Lucenti said the president had misled the country into war, conducted illegal electronic spying on Americans and violated international torture treaties.

"I would hope that any one of these infractions would bring the administration down," she said. "We need to restore accountability in our federal government."

James Barnett, chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, called the vote out of step.

"This demonstrates that leaders of the Vermont Democratic Party are among the most extreme in the nation to have taken this rather radical and highly partisan step," he said.

The committee decided against a proposal to urge impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.

"Let's keep it crisp," said committee member Billie Gosh. "Let's keep it clear. Let's focus on the target."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/04/08/national/w143916D27.DTL

(*) (*) :D :D :D ;)

April :'( :'( bring May (f) (f) 's.......

({) (}) 's & (k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-09-2006, 04:21 PM

Who's listening to podcasts? Apparently no one. According to a new report from Forrester, only 1 percent of online households in North America regularly download and listen to podcasts. "Podcasts have hit the mainstream consciousness but have not yet seen widespread use," Forrester analyst Charlene Li explains. "One-quarter of online consumers express interest in podcasts, with most interested in time-shifting existing radio and Internet radio channels. Companies that are interested in using podcasts for their audio should focus not only on downloads but also on streaming audio as a means to get their content and ads to consumers."

So podcasting, for the moment at least, is not only a bare trickle in the media stream, but one whose appeal is limited to those who use it to time-shift broadcast radio. Now to be fair, we're only 18 months or so into the podcasting phenom, and Li predicts that it will grow to reach 12.3 million households in the U.S. by 2010. So there's a chance yet that it will someday become a mainstream medium. But right now it seems there's little evidence to merit all the bloviating we've been hearing from podcast evangelists.

http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,38761,00.html

http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/2006/04/forrester_podca_1.html

http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20050519/1883/

(*) ......:| :| ........Yep, still not mainstream, despite the hype. ;)

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-09-2006, 04:23 PM

http://gadgets.fosfor.se/the-top-10-weirdest-keyboards-ever/

;) (h)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-09-2006, 04:26 PM

http://www.celebrities-eating.com/

(*) Eeewwww! It must attrack osme folks I guess. I think the folks at the Mercury News (San Jose, that is) are off in the weeds (as all us us are at one time or another)...;)

(f) (f) 's.

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-09-2006, 04:30 PM

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/wec.shtml

(*) You have to read the description to get it......;)

(c) (c) Hmm, I think it's fresh coffee time!

Have a really nice week.

(f) (f) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-09-2006, 04:31 PM

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/buzzaire.shtml

(*) I couldn't resist posting this one...(c) (c) ;) ;)

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-13-2006, 12:30 AM

http://shmivejournal.livejournal.com/125746.html

Happy Holiday!

(f) (f) (f) (f) (f) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-13-2006, 12:32 AM

:| :| :|

There's more to honey than a squirt from the little bear. This site, sponsored by the National Honey Board, includes honey recipes, general honey facts, honey trivia for kids, the science of honey, the latest honey research, and more. Drooling yet?

http://www.honey.com/

;) ;)

Sweetlady & her Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-13-2006, 12:35 AM

Whether you're planning a visit or just curious, you'll find information on what to eat, where to sleep, what to see, and more. Check out Japanese 101 for a crash course in the language, so you can learn to say "Toire wa doko ni arimasu ka?" (Translation available on the site.)

http://www.planettokyo.com/

Hanami Has Started

The harbinger of Spring in Japan is the cherry blossom. When the weather turns warm, the trees respond by bursting into flower -- thousands of blooms cover branches and fill the senses. When the flowers appear, people engage in an activity known as hanami -- flower viewing. Specifically, cherry blossom viewing.

(l) (l) (l) (l) (l)

(k) (k) (k) 's

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

Lady_Di

04-13-2006, 12:51 AM

between the honey and your keyboard posts, I thought these were very current indeed...

Happy Passover, Sweet Lady and Wyatt!

May you and Wyatt take the bitter with the sweet this coming year. I just saw a young highschooler on Oprah who has invented a new keyboard that is a glove which I thought was brilliant design, throw away our limited viewpoint. Those you posted were not all that wierd, I thought. I gave you some rep points just for opening our mind's eye to new ideas. I also saw a new keyboard the other day that was dishwasher safe for the kitchens of tomorrow. After recently detailing my keyboard here *so not an easy task...* as I spring clean my house, making my home kosher clean here for Passover... well suffice it to say a dishwasher safe keyboard is brilliant!

I want one.

Yo quiero el dishwasher safe keyboard~

sweetlady

04-29-2006, 12:50 PM

sweetlady

04-29-2006, 12:54 PM

http://www.petplace.com/dogs/choosing-a-boxer/page1.aspx

(k) (k) 's

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-29-2006, 12:56 PM

List of Acronyms & Text Messaging Shorthand:

http://www.netlingo.com/emailsh.cfm

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-29-2006, 12:58 PM

A Polish immigrant goes to the Michigan Department of Motor Vehicles in
Lansing to apply for a driver's license and is told he has to take an eye test. The examiner
shows him a card with the letters:

C Z J W I X N O S T A C Z

"Can you read this?" the examiner asks.

"Read it?" the Polish guy replies, "I know the guy!!"

;) ;)

From a PAP (Polish American Princess).....well one-quarter to one-half anyway.....:)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady

sweetlady

04-29-2006, 01:00 PM

Give in to your rebellious side and test your artistic capabilities by creating your own graffiti wall. This site is highly interactive and allows you to unleash you inner creativity without destroying public property (always a plus.) Beware of the "No Rules" room where others are graffiting too, unless you have some serious patience. We enjoyed viewing the walls of others by visiting the "Old School" and "Serious Art" rooms, and had the most fun crafting our own masterpiece in the "private room," allotted for those who like to work alone.

http://graffiti.playdo.com/

:) :) :)

(k) (k) 's & ({) (}) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-29-2006, 01:02 PM

talk about belly laughs! Definitely a major LMAO!!!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=93261954951924275&pr=goog-sl

(*) (*) :) :) ;) ;)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-29-2006, 01:06 PM

Q U O T E D

"Our beta sites loved the software."

-- No. 9 in Guy Kawasaki's list of the Top 10 Lies of Engineers

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/04/the_top_ten_lie.html

;) If you don't know who Guy is, google him.........(i) (h)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady and Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-29-2006, 01:11 PM

Top Story
Now, Ultra HD!

Just when the U.S. and the rest of the world was finally settling into a routine with the HD transition along comes Japanese broadcaster NHK with a demonstration of Ultra High-Definition TV system at the NAB convention.

Resolution of the new system is 7,680x4,320 lines, delivering 32 million pixels, 16 times the current 1920x1080 standard that has two million pixels. While Nagamitsu Endo, NHK Enterprises America producer, co-productions, says the system isn’t expected to be ready for consumer deployment until 2025 it already has caught the eye of the industry’s leading HD proponents.

And how could it not? Displayed on a massive 20x30 foot screen with 22.2 channels of audio the jaw-dropping material included dramatic shots of dawn in New York City, crowds at soccer matches, cherry blossoms in bloom in Japan, and a killer whale jumping at an aquarium show that was so realistic attendees expected to get wet.

“In the early days of HD technology was a moving target and NHK has just raised the bar again,” says Randall P. Dark, president of HD Vision Studios in Los Angeles and one of the true early adopters of HD production gear. “And once again we’re looking at big, bulky technology that is user hostile, very expensive, and will take some time before someone like myself can go in the field and create images with.”

Endo says there are only two Ultra HD cameras in the world and he hopes to have one in the U.S. to acquire U.S.-based video. The system features a massive camera that looks like a prop out of “Good Night and Good Luck” and requires a specially built Image Processor, the VP-8400, from Astrodesign. Features of the system include real-time chromatic aberration correction (which keeps colors more realistic) and HD resolution conversion so images shot at the higher resolution can easily be downconverted to current HD standards. Transmission data rates are currently 640 Mbps.

The system also features 22.2 channels of audio, making it, eventually, ideal for theater and Imax-like movie going experiences. There are four layers of audio: a lower layer with three channels, a middle layer with10 channels and an upper level with nine channels. Two Low Frequency channels are also in place.

“It’s very expensive technology but it’s exciting because it’s a level up,” says Dark. “It’s bigger, better and brighter. I’m just upset that it isn’t American companies that are coming up with technologies like this.”

http://www.multichannel.com/info/CA6328635.html#6328645

(*) (*) My lady propeller-head beanie spinner is well, spinning! :o :) ;) (h)

;) ;)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-29-2006, 01:14 PM

http://www.worth1000.com/cache/contest/contestcache.asp?contest_id=10027&start=1&end=10&display=photoshop#entries

(*) ..Unusual to say the least. :)

(c) (c) Time to make some fresh coffee, maybe have it iced. Yummy.

Have a delighful rest of your weekend.(f) (f)

Peace,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-29-2006, 01:22 PM

It will be the tech industry's most closely watched court case since U.S. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered the breakup of Microsoft in June 2000. After months of accusations and acrimony, Microsoft finally squared off against the European Commission today, appealing the EC's decision in 2004 to fine it $613 million for abusing its dominant position in the market. In opening statements this morning, Microsoft attorney Jean-Francois Bellis argued that the EU's ruling was was a bad one, marred by "fundamental errors of fact and reasoning." At first glance, this hearing might seem like one more turn of the screw in a painfully protracted legal process. But it's a crucial one that will set a precedent for Microsoft's future plans, which include the forthcoming launch of its Windows Vista OS. Essentially, the appeal will determine what features Microsoft can include in Vista, specifically Windows Media Player.

Microsoft claims that demand for Windows N, the media-player-free version of Windows it was required to distribute as a condition of the EC's 2004 ruling, has been anemic at best, which suggests the bundled version was far less an abuse of market power than the commission claimed. Microsoft's rivals, of course, disagree, and some of them will present evidence to that effect this week. "Microsoft likes to point to Apple's iTunes as evidence that there is vibrant competition in the media player market. But iTunes is not a fully featured, general purpose streaming media player," Simon Awde, chairman of The European Committee for Interoperable Systems, said. "By imposing its player and its format as the standard, Microsoft can become the gatekeeper, which would allow it to dictate how and at what price digital media content is created, delivered and played."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4937840.stm

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/14415389.htm

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13130-2149810,00.html

(*) (*) Ha, ha, ha on ole Billy Boy.......:o ;)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

04-29-2006, 01:25 PM

Life Size Chocolate Rooms:

http://www.foodisart.co.uk/chocolate%20rooms.html

:| :| :| :P :P :P :o :o :o :D :D :D

Truly, madly deeply if I could afford one of these but then again if someone were around to share.......;)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

deliciouslytish

05-05-2006, 01:59 AM

http://ahhtish.com/pd/wander1.html

sweetlady

05-09-2006, 05:11 PM

Once upon a time there lived a king. The king had a beautiful daughter,
the princess. But there was a problem.

Everything the princess touched melted. No matter what; metal, wood,
stone, anything she touched would melt. Because of this, men were afraid
of her. Nobody would dare marry her.

The king despaired. What could he do to help his daughter? He consulted
his wizards and magicians.

One wizard told the king, "If your daughter touches one thing that does
not melt in her hands, she will be cured."

The king was overjoyed and came up with a plan. The next day, he held a
competition. Any man that could bring his daughter an object that would
not melt would marry her and inherit the king's wealth.

Three young princes took up the challenge. The first brought a sword of
the finest steel. But alas, when the princess touched it, it melted. The
prince went away sadly.

The second prince brought diamonds. He thought diamonds are the hardest
substance in the world and would not melt. But alas, once the princess
touched them, they melted. He too was sent away disappointed.

The third prince approached. He told the princess, "Put your hand in my
pocket and feel what is in there."

The princess did as she was told, though she turned red. She felt something
hard. She held it in her hand and it did not melt!!! The king was
overjoyed.
Everybody in the kingdom was overjoyed. And the third prince married the
princess and they both lived happily ever after.

Question: What was in the prince's pants?
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Why, M&M's, of course!!

--

:) .....:) ;) ;) ;) :D :D :D :D :D

Hugs,

Sweetlady and Wyatt the Handsome Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l) ....(l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-09-2006, 05:13 PM

by Aefa Mulholland with Ed Salvato

Rehoboth Beach

Rehoboth means rooms for all -- but you won't have room for all the delicacies that jostle for your attention on this Delaware seaside resort's menus. More than 200 restaurants and nightspots bring influxes from D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York to the nation's summer capital.

World-class cuisine stars (often with world-class resort-town prices). This one-mile-square town's population soars from a mere 1,500 to 80,000 on summer weekends, so restaurant reservations are essential. To really savor this seaside delight, Rehoboth Beach has an annual restaurant week (early May; 302/227-2772). Participating restaurants offer three-course fixed-price menus for $30, along with wine and beer tasting, and cabaret.

Room with a Q -- gay and gay-popular restaurants
Whether you choose to linger over fine dining options or race through rapid repasts, Cloud 9 (234 Rehoboth Ave; 302/226-1999; www.cloud9restaurant.com; $18-$38) serves up gourmet pizzas, pasta specialties and more and inherits somewhat of an effervescent atmosphere from its popular bar.

Less than two blocks from the beach, the Blue Moon (35 Baltimore Ave; 302/227-6516; www.bluemoonrehoboth.com; $22-$39) has cosmos to die for. The lovely turn-of -the-last-century beach house is packed with the après-sun crowd from 4-8 p.m. daily, and Friday nights from 10 p.m. to midnight.

Chez La Mer (210 Second St; 302/227-6494; www.chezlamer.com; $22-32) offers continental style cuisine indoors and on the rooftop. Entrées include sautéed soft shell crabs and filet mignon, as well as a limited vegetarian menu. If you want to fit in even more delicious dishes, the eatery offers small-plate portions ($10-$18).

Hip, sophisticated, quintessential -- the city's culinary landmarks
Nage (4307 Highway 1; 302/226-2037; www.nage.bz; $16-$32, fixed-price menu $28), the lovely French bistro opened by chef/owner Kevin Reading (formerly of Espuma), boasts both sophistication and comfort.

Chef Reading may have pared down his style, but not the taste, as diners will realize from the first morsel of his clams casino flatbread or first sup of warm lobster gazpacho. He opened DC Nage in March 2006 for residents of the capital craving his cuisine between beach visits.

59 Lake (59 Lake Ave.; 302/226-5900; www.59lake.com; $19-$35)
Hot red, orange and yellow hues create the ambience at this Manhattan-esque supper club. The exciting creations of Scottish-born chef Ross Fraser delight diners.

With a mission to stimulate palates and warm hearts, it's little wonder that the Back Porch Café (59 Rehoboth Ave; 302/227-3674; www.backporchcafe.com; $24-35, brunch $10-$14) is always crowded, with friendly staffers and creatively prepared fish, beef, lamb, pork and game.

Know-gos -- insider picks and unusual options
Two beach houses with numerous small dining rooms, and a bamboo forest-surrounded patio, make up La La Land (22 Wilmington Ave; 302/227-3887; www.lalalandrestaurant.com; $25-$32), an eclectic lavender-hued fine dining address a block from the boardwalk.

Sedona (26A Pennsylvania Ave; 302/539-1200; www.fusion-sedona.com; $26-$40) is under the same gay-friendly ownership as hip Fusion. Specializing in New American fare, Sedona is an excellent restaurant 20 minutes south in quiet, upscale Bethany Beach.

So close to the surf that the fish practically land on the grill, Venus on the Half Shell (136 Dagsworthy St; 302/227-9292; www.venusonthehalfshell.com; $25-39) is owned by Chef Justine Carpenter, also of Planet X. Middle Eastern and Asian-inspired surrounds complement an eclectic menu, with Asian, Mediterranean and New American flourishes.

(*) (*) ,okay....who is interested?

CARPE DIEM!

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l) ...(l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-09-2006, 05:14 PM

1. How well can you spell? :-)

http://channels.netscape.com/atplay/sertrivia.jsp?id=atplay_spellingtrivia

2. State Capitols:

http://channels.netscape.com/atplay/statecapitals.jsp

3. OLD Cartoon Trivia:

http://channels.netscape.com/atplay/sertrivia.jsp?id=atplay_cartoontrivia

4. Life's funniest Questions (for which there are no answers...lol):

http://channels.netscape.com/atplay/seroddfun.jsp?id=atplay_lifesfunniestquestion&floc=ap-odd-3-l7

(S) (S) (S)

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l) ....(l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-09-2006, 05:16 PM

http://www.damninteresting.com/

Carpe Diem!

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-09-2006, 05:17 PM

Internet audience hits 694 million worldwide

May 5, 2006 - 9:31AM Sydney Morning Herald

Some 694 million people worldwide over age 15 are now using the Internet, about 14 percent of the total population in this age group, according to a survey released Thursday.

The report by research firm comScore Networks claims to be "the first true estimate of global online audience size and behavior" using consistent methodology.

The estimate was based on a survey of major markets including China and India.

"Today, the online audience in the US represents less than a quarter of Internet users across the globe, versus 10 years ago when it accounted for two-thirds of the global audience," said Peter Daboll, president and chief executive of comScore Media Metrix.

According to the report, the United States still had the single largest Internet audience, of 152 million users, followed by China (72 million), Japan

(52 million), Germany (32 million) and Britain (30 million).

In fifth place was South Korea (24.6 million) followed by France (23.9 million), Canada (19 million), Italy 16.8 million and India (16.7 million).

Rounding out the top 15 countries were Brazil (13.2 million), Spain (12.5 million), Netherlands (11 million), Russia (10.8 million) and Australia (9.7 million)

In terms on most time spent online, Israel led the list, with the average user spending 57.5 hours online during the month - twice as much time compared to the average person in the United States.

Rounding out the top five in this category were Finland, South Korea, the Netherlands and Taiwan.

The data showed "high levels of engagement in countries outside the US. In fact, the US does not even make the top 15 country list in terms of hours per user per month," said Daboll.

Among the top websites worldwide, Microsoft's MSN sites headed the list with 538.6 million global users, followed by Google (495.8 million users), and Yahoo (480.2 million users).

http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking/internet-audience-hits-694m-worldwide/2006/05/05/1146335896624.html#

(k) (k) (k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-09-2006, 05:18 PM

May 6, 2006 The Sydney Morning Herald

Fly around the world and never leave home.

Nick Galvin checks in to the world of flight-simulator enthusiasts.

I'm a guest on the flight deck of a Boeing 747-400 jet. We've just taxied up to the domestic terminal at Sydney Airport after completing a routine flight from Canberra. The tension in the cockpit has subsided after a safe landing. It's about 3pm.

We spot a jet alongside in the familiar livery of a rival airline. Having established radio contact, we chat with pilot Norm Blackburn, swapping pleasantries and industry gossip for a while before going our separate ways.

On the face of it this would seem a pretty ordinary exchange in the workaday routine of a domestic flight crew.

We're not on the tarmac at Kingsford Smith. We're in a truck parts workshop in Chipping Norton, while Norm is sitting in his house in Larne, Northern Ireland, at 4am. Welcome to the surreal, contradictory world of virtual aviation, where disbelief is suspended at 33,000 feet and nothing is ever quite what it seems.

Flight simulators have been around for as long as the personal computer. The early versions were crude affairs with clunky graphics that required a lot of imagination from the pilot sitting at his desk.

Time and technology have moved on and programs such as the wildly popular Microsoft Flight Simulator (www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulator) have developed an astonishing level of realism. And now, with the widespread use of broadband internet connections, virtual pilots can connect to servers allowing them to share the same virtual airspace and see each other crisscrossing the skies in real-time.

Only a few "sim" fans go to the lengths of Matthew Sheil, the owner of the Chipping Norton simulator.

By his own admission, Sheil is unusually hard core when it comes to the virtual flying game. You don't spend $300,000 and five years scouring the world for used aircraft parts without being pretty committed.

He says there are five years to go before the project is completed but even at this stage the simulator is unbelievably realistic.

Sheil joins fellow enthusiasts Terry Scanlan and Rob Hooley to demonstrate the machine with a brief domestic flight.

As Scanlan and Hooley settle into the pilot and co-pilot seats, with the runway of Canberra Airport through the cockpit window, they begin their preflight checks following the exact procedure of their real world counterparts.

As the "plane" gathers pace the virtual runway begins flashing by until we are airborne, climbing through clouds and turbulence that mimics exactly the weather over the ACT.

Approaching Sydney Airport, I crane to look out a side window to spot my suburb thousands of feet below. For me the illusion is almost perfect.

"It really does mess with your head, sometimes," says Sheil cheerfully as he points out Prospect Reservoir. "Daytime, night time, sunsets ... Everything you see in the real world you see out there."

His enthusiasm is infectious but he refuses to take himself or his hobby too seriously - something I suspect some of the hundreds of thousands of other virtual flyers around the world may struggle with.

"This is just a big boy's toy," he says. "At the end of the day it's just like a big Nintendo game."

Unlike most other virtual pilots, Sheil is also a veteran real-world flier, piloting light aircraft around the country to visit the various branches of his business. But, he says, he keeps his real-world and simulated aviation mentally separate - even if virtual flying can often be more fun.

"I enjoy simulated flying sometimes much more than real-world flying because you can fly under the Harbour Bridge and do a barrel roll," he says. "You can't do that in the real world. There are no rules, no limitations [in sims]."

As we continue our trip from virtual Canberra to virtual Sydney, the flight is punctuated by radio contact from our virtual air traffic controllers. When the virtual skies are crowded with virtual aircraft, naturally you need virtual controllers to maintain order.

Like the virtual pilots, these air traffic controllers are enthusiasts from around the world whose passion is learning the skills and procedures of real-world air traffic control.

Scanlan is one of the founders of the Pacific Region Division of the Virtual Air Traffic Controllers Association. Worldwide, he says, there are about 90,000 members of the parent body, about 30,000 of them active.

The virtual controllers are usually virtual pilots who want to take a step up and train with Scanlan's organisation to look after a slice of air space. They use software that allows them to "see" where aircraft are and bring them safely into hundreds of airports worldwide.

"When we stage structured events, that brings people out," Scanlan says. "We could have 10 air traffic controllers, say, and 30 or 40 aircraft up in the air."

Dean Bielanowski, the editor of Computer Pilot Magazine, has long pondered the compelling attraction of virtual aviation.

"I think as young kids you always look up at the sky and wonder how planes stay in the air," he says. "I think there is an inbuilt fascination with flight in general. For the cost of a flight sim package and a computer to run it - maybe $1500 - you can be the pilot of a 747 in a virtual world whereas in the real world the opportunity to do that is very limited. That's the core fascination for people."

Many virtual fliers take that fascination with aviation to the next stage by joining one of the hundreds of virtual airlines that operate around the world. Virtual airlines have been around as long as flight simulators themselves.

"They were first created to give a purpose to flights," Bielanowski says. "Instead of just flying here to there, people join a virtual airline and fly routes.

"Some go as far as to set up virtual bank accounts for their pilots to earn money based on how many flights they have done and the airline has management where they can factor in costs and buy new virtual aircraft based on how much money they make."

But for sheer dedication in virtual aviation it's hard to beat the effort Shiel and his mates put in each year in a charity event called Worldflight, which raises money for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Fifteen virtual flying enthusiasts take Sheil's simulator on a 130-hour round-the-world trip, calling in at 45 airports. For a week the pilots do little else but fly the simulator, often accompanied by dozens of other enthusiasts worldwide who come along for the flight.

To add to the sense of realism, they even restrict themselves to genuine airline meals in the cockpit.

"Qantas provides all our food," Sheil says. "You've got the smells, the sensations, the weather, the air traffic controllers of the country you're flying through. Sometimes, you walk out the door and have to remind yourself you're in Chipping Norton and not going down Patpong Road in Bangkok.

"My wife says when I start booking accommodation at these places I fly to she'll get worried."

Take to the skies

To take to the virtual skies in your own flight sim you will first need to check your computer is powerful enough to run the software.

"Because the flight simulator software is more demanding on your computer's system than pretty much any kind of software, short of 3D rendering, you need a pretty good system to start with," Dean Bielanowski says.

"You can run it on an older machine but you don't get the full experience because you have to turn down a lot of the scenery and graphics."

The minimum system specifications for Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2004 ($99.95), which is used almost universally by enthusiasts, are a 450MHz computer with 128MB of RAM, but Bielanowski says 2GHz with at least 512MB RAM or, preferably, 1GB is nearer the mark.

A decent video card is also a must for a smooth virtual flying experience. There are many different models available from the two big names in video cards: ATI and nVidia. The minimum spend here is about $200. The next item on your shopping list is some kind of input device. You can operate Flight Simulator via your computer keyboard but that soon palls and you'll want at least to spring for a joystick after a while.

"A basic joystick is about $100 or if you want to make things more realistic you can go for a control yoke and a set of rudder pedals," says Bielanowski. "The cheapest decent set is a bit over $500 for the two."

Online flying with other pilots and perhaps even a virtual air traffic controller make up the ultimate thrill for many enthusiasts, but it makes sense to attain some proficiency before joining up. That way you can crash as many times as you wish in the privacy of your own home without the whole virtual aviation world looking on.

Once you know your way around the cockpit of your aircraft, you can head to the likes of the popular Virtual Air Traffic Controllers (www.vatpac.org) to start your online virtual flying career. Another option is the International Virtual Aviation Organisation (www.ivao.org).

For more information on getting started in flight sims, Computer Pilot Magazine (www.computerpilot.com) is a great resource. On Avsim (www.avsim.com) and Flightsim (www.flightsim.com), you'll also find heaps of information plus a mass of downloadable files to add on to your flight sim program.

Infofile

If you suffer from airsickness and can't think of anything worse than piloting a virtual plane, a more down-to-earth option is the world of train simulators. Microsoft Train Simulator (www.microsoft.com/games/trainsimulator) is a leader in the field and allows you to recreate classic journeys using trains such as the Flying Scotsman and the Orient Express. Virtual train spotters can surely only be around the corner!

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/cockpit-capers/2006/05/03/1146335804694.html

(k) (k) (k) 's

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Handsome Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-09-2006, 05:20 PM

Dick Cheney: The 'Enemy at the Gates'

According to Russia's top business newspaper Kommersant, a speech by Vice President Dick Cheney at a conference in Lithuania mentioned the Cold War three times, and was reminiscent of Churchill's famous speech in Fulton, Missouri, when he declared that, 'an Iron Curtain' had descended across Europe.

By Mikhail Zygar

May 5, 2006

ULTIMATUM

At the "Common Vision for a Common Neighborhood" conference in Vilnius yesterday, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney gave a programmatic speech on relations between the West and Russia. He criticized the Kremlin's domestic policy ad accused Moscow of "blackmail," "intimidation," "undermining the territorial integrity of its neighbors" and "interference in democratic processes." As the G8 summit in St. Petersburg approaches, Russia is being given the choice between "returning to democracy" and "becoming an enemy."

Until yesterday, the White House preferred to criticize Kremlin policies only through press secretaries. U.S. President George W. Bush and politicians close to him spoke of Russia as a reliable partner in the fight against international terrorism, even while admitting to certain disagreements. Cheney's Vilnius speech has broken that tradition and was the most pointed declaration by an American leader since the end of the Cold War.

The theme of the Cold War ran throughout Cheney's speech. That phrase, first spoken exactly 60 years ago by Winston Churchill at Fulton, was used by Cheney three times. He named the heroes of the Cold War who, in his opinion, made the greatest contributions to democracy: Andrey Sakharov, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Pope John Paul II, Natan Sharansky and Ronald Reagan. He interspersed that list with the names of the "heroes of our time": [Georgia's President] Mikhail Saakashvili, [Ukraine's President] Viktor Yushchenko and Alexander Milinkevich, the Belarusian opposition leader who is now jailed in Minsk. Cheney's words practically point to a renewal of the Cold War, only now the "front line" has changed. "The spread of democracy is irreversible. It is to the benefit of all and poses a threat to no one. The system that has provided hope on the shores of the Baltic Sea can bring hope to the shores of the Black Sea and even farther," Cheney said. "That which is applicable to Vilnius is applicable to Tbilisi and to Kiev, and it is applicable to Minsk and Moscow as well."

Mentioning Moscow and Minsk in this context, Cheney identified them as powers opposing democratic states. He then criticized Russian and Belarusian authorities. He spoke shortly but mercilessly about Belarus, saying the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has earned the title of "last dictator of Europe."

"There is no place in Europe for that kind of regime. The people of Belarus deserve better," the U.S. vice president said before turning his attention to Russia.

Cheney briefly listed the charges accumulated against Russia. First, the victories of recent decades are being scaled back as the authorities limit civil rights and the rights of the media, nongovernmental organizations and political parties. Cheney continued that Russia's policies are detrimental not only within the country but beyond it as well. "No one can justify actions that undermine the territorial integrity of a neighbor, or interfere with democratic movements. No legitimate interest is served when oil and gas become tools of intimidation or blackmail, either by supply manipulation or attempts to monopolize transportation," Cheney said.

Cheney's speech culminated in the assertion that Russia faces the choice of "returning to democracy" or "becoming an enemy."

"There is no question that a return to democratic reform in Russia will generate further success for its people and greater respect among fellow nations," Cheney said. "None of us believes that Russia is fated to become an enemy." But it can be concluded from that statement that the likelihood of that happening is high.

The Baltic and Black Sea region leaders assembled at the conference applauded the U.S. vice president. The leaders of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltic countries, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia were present in Vilnius. Cheney's address to these nations practically identifies their countries as the "defensive wall" that separates the democratic West from potentially hostile Russia. Cheney's speech was full of praise for the "new democracies." He thanked the "brave leaders" of the color revolutions for proposing the summit and noted the success of the Baltic States, "one the provinces of an empire, ancient nations whose sovereignty was stolen" that were able to throw off imperial dictatorship and the command economy. He gave a rather lengthy description of democratic values, hinting that democracy is now being threatened, although without stating directly where that threat was coming from.

"I don't think I have to mention what the alternative is (to democracy). You have all seen it and lived through it." He went on to list centralized control, intimidation of political opponents, merciless corruption, ever-present violence, national decline, economic stagnation "that no rational person could want."

Cheney ended his speech by mentioning the July G8 summit in St. Petersburg. The leading developed countries will make it clear to Russia there that it has nothing to fear and can only win if there will is a "strong democratic state" within its borders. In other words, an answer is expected from Russia at the G8 summit about which of the two relationships with the West it has chosen. That is bad news for the Kremlin, which has grandiose political and propagandistic plans of its own for the summit.

This Article: http://www.watchingamerica.com/kommersant000005.shtml

http://www.watchingamerica.com/index.shtml

(*) (*) Let's get rid of them all.

(y) (y) (y) (y) (y)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-09-2006, 05:22 PM

May 5, 2006

The White Working Class Test

By Ruy Teixeira

(Note: this is a cross-post from the TPM Cafe Book Club discussion of David Sirota's new book, Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--and How We Take It Back. The whole discussion, including Sirota's replies, may be found here.)

In choosing how to reach voters, whether for public education or more direct electoral purposes, progressives need to keep the following facts in mind.

1. The key weakness of the progressive coalition is very weak support among white working class voters (defined here as whites without a four-year college degree). These voters, who are overwhelmingly of moderate to low income and, by definition, of modest credentials, should see their aspirations linked tightly to the political fate of the progressive movement. But they don’t.

2. In 2000, Gore lost white working class voters by 17 points; in 2004, Kerry lost them by 23 points, a swing of 6 points against the Democrats. Bush's increased margin among these voters was primarily responsible for his re-election victory.

3. Democrats have been doing especially poorly among white working class voters who aren’t poor, but rather have moderate incomes and some hold on a middle class lifestyle. Among working class whites with $30,000/no spamming of other sites/$50,000 in household income, Bush beat Kerry by twenty-four points (62 percent to 38 percent). And, among working class whites with $50,000/no spamming of other sites/$75,000 in household income, Bush beat Kerry by a shocking forty-one points (70 percent to 29 percent). Clearly, these voters do not see progressives as representing their aspirations for a prosperous, stable middle class life.

4. Progressives’ difficulties are underscored by the large size of this group. According to the 2004 CPS Voter Supplement data, white working class voters are a larger portion of the electorate than indicated by the exit polls/no spamming of other sites/52 percent, rather than 43 percent. Based on educational attainment trends and population trends by race, a reasonable guess is that the size of the white working class in another ten years, even though it is shrinking, will still be around 46-47 percent/no spamming of other sites/a very large group among which to be doing very poorly. In fact, a progressive majority coalition is simply not possible if that poor performance continues, despite the many ways in which demographic change and growth favor progressives.

Those are the facts. That is why I propose "the white working class test". Does the strategy or approach under consideration--David's or anyone else's--seem like a plausible way of making serious progress among this group? If the answer to this question is "yes", we should implement it. If "no", then we shouldn't put much stock in it, since it is likely to be, at best, a way of treading water--keeping the progressive coalition at its current level, rather than breaking through to majority status.

Applying this test to David's recommended approach, I think he comes up short. Recent public opinion data indicate that voters in general and this group of voters in particular are already quite hostile to big business, believe corporations are taking unfair advantage of the system and think Bush and the Republicans push corporate interests over and above that of the public's. Indeed, hostile attitudes toward "Big Money", as David would put it, are now at historically high levels.

In other words, much of the public, including the white working class, already knows the Truth--or at least a good part of it. That suggests that simply throwing more truth at them is unlikely, by itself, to have that much effect.

A better answer it to integrate one's truth-telling--much of which simply reinforces what voters already believe--with a programmatic and thematic approach that captures the aspirations of white working class voters for a better life.

I certainly believe "populism" broadly-defined is part of that approach. But I do think it makes a difference how that populism is pitched. I've called it "class-aspirational". Andrei Cherny called it "future-oriented". We can debate exactly how to do this, but we must get beyond the delusion that simply telling the truth about Big Money to the people is all the populism we need. If not, we'll keep on flunking the white working class test with predictably bad consequences for the progressive movement and for the country as a whole.

http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/

(*) (*) ........anyone got an opinion??

:| :| :| :| (t) (t) (t)

(k) (k) 's

SL & WTBP (l) (&)

sweetlady

05-09-2006, 05:24 PM

http://www.crooksandliars.com/

"Trace Gallagher on FOX's Studio B, called him "Usama Bin Laden," matching the FOX facts below. Maybe this is one of the reasons we haven't captured public enemy #1. They don't even know his name."

:| :| :|

I HATE Fox news. They hate us, have ya noticed??

:) :) ,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-09-2006, 05:26 PM

This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060515/editors

Songs of Protest

[from the May 15, 2006 issue]

There may never be another Bob Dylan. But there will always be protest music of the sort that first endeared Dylan to a mass audience, and that confirmed the power of song to move not just a generation but a nation. Dylan was not the first protest singer; indeed, a good deal of his early Dust Bowl-poet persona derived from Woody Guthrie. And as his more overtly political compatriot Phil Ochs noted in the mid-1960s, Dylan was never comfortable in any movement, a fact that eventually led him to shed his topical-songwriter trappings to become the mythical character that Richard Goldstein examines on page 11. But the artful approach to political songwriting that Dylan pioneered remains an inspiration to today's musicians. And what they sing and say still matters, as the first skirmish of the Iraq War--the frontal assault on the dissenting Dixie Chicks after their lead singer criticized George W. Bush--confirmed.

As the devastation escalated, so did the music. Green Day's album American Idiot, a roaring pop-punk assault on the "redneck agenda" and the warped discourse of post-9/11 America, went to Number 1 on the charts, won a Grammy in 2005 for Best Rock Album and has sold more than 5 million copies. Hip-hop star Kanye West telescoped frustration with the White House's dawdling response to Hurricane Katrina when he told a national television audience, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." On his CDs West has been equally fierce, sarcastically suggesting on his 2005 song "Crack Music" that if anyone's still got questions about Saddam Hussein's supposed chemical weapons stash, "George Bush got the answer."

Now, as Bush's chart position sinks, he's getting even worse reviews. Pearl Jam's new single, "World Wide Suicide," the story of a mother mourning a son killed in battle because his was a life "the President took for granted," tops Billboard's Modern Rock chart. Bruce Springsteen has recorded a rollicking tribute to protest songs by the country's most famous folk singer in a new album, The Seeger Sessions: We Shall Overcome. Moby and REM's Michael Stipe just headlined an antiwar "Bring 'Em Home Now" concert, and the Dixie Chicks are letting Bush know they're not backing down, with their new single, "Not Ready to Make Nice." The extent to which Bush's fortunes have turned may be summed up by the news that pop singer Pink, who began the Bush era promising to "Get the Party Started," is ending it with a sobering lament, "Dear Mr. President," that savages Bush's stances on gay rights, the minimum wage and the war. Hitting even harder is veteran rocker Neil Young, whose post-9/11 song "Let's Roll" was heard by some as a call for war. Young clarifies things on his new CD, Living With War. With a track titled "Let's Impeach the President," it won't feature on George Bush's iPod.

But others in Washington are hearing the power chords. For years, Justin Sane, lead singer of the political punk band Anti-Flag, said it was "left to artists to make the statements that should be getting put into the public discourse." But Anti-Flag is no longer shouting from the sidelines. The band's new CD, For Blood and Empire, features the song "Depleted Uranium Is a War Crime." It was inspired by an appearance at a 2004 Punk Voter rally in Seattle with Representative Jim McDermott, a Vietnam-era vet who has introduced legislation calling for an investigation of the military's use of DU. McDermott is on the CD, and the band is spearheading a drive to get Congress to act on the bill.

Come to think of it, if a 69-year-old Congressman is heeding the call of a punk band, maybe it's time to recognize that, with prodding from outspoken and courageous musicians, the Bush order is rapidly fading and the times, again, are a-changin'.

(*) (*) (*) .......:) :) :)

CARPE DIEM,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-09-2006, 05:28 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnvgkCFZbl4

:| :| :| :| :| :| :| :| :| :|

;) ;)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-10-2006, 03:43 PM

Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh

(Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Through: 7/9/2006

Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut was the “gutsiest cross-dresser of all time,” said Ariella Budick in Newsday. “She played for the highest stakes.” While women could be leaders in ancient Egypt, a pharaoh was male by definition. So Hatshepsut reinvented herself as a “hybrid gender, presenting a challenge to the sculptors charged with translating her flesh into stone.” Her flexible identity is the subject of a fascinating exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. When Hatshepsut’s husband and half-brother, Thutmose II, died in 1479 B.C., she became regent for his stepson. While regents customarily stepped aside when a child came of age, Hatshepsut instead had herself crowned king and ruled alongside him as “senior co-pharaoh.” Once made, this move could never be reversed, as pharaohs were gods and could not renounce their divinity. Apparently, Thutmose III was okay with this—until 20 years after Hatshepsut’s death, when he had all images of her destroyed.

The reasons for this sudden desire to erase her memory remain mysterious, said Grace Glueck in The New York Times. Hatshepsut’s reign was among the most prosperous in Egypt’s history. Art and architecture flourished, and peace prevailed. In these ways, her rule could be compared to that of Elizabeth I of England. The first view of Hatshepsut is in the Met’s Great Hall, where a gargantuan sphinx of the gender-bending pharaoh, 11 feet long and carved of granite, looms. Pieced together from fragments excavated by Met researchers, it has a lion’s body and a “royal portrait head adorned with the striped head cloth and stylized ceremonial beard worn by kings.” The exhibit opens with another granite statue, more than 8 feet high, also reconstructed. It, too, depicts her with the traditional kingly head cloth and beard. But the most attractive and informal image is that of a seated, feminine Hatshepsut, beardless and clothed in a sleeveless sheath.

The female pharaoh was “no Nefertiti,” said Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker. She had a broad face and big features, except for a “dainty chin.” Even in this “colossal statuary she’s more pleasant-looking than anything else.” Yet her smile suggests a “confident oneness with divinity.” The nearly 300 objects on display here are much more engrossing than the usual “Treasures of So-and-So” exhibition. Among statues of Hatshepsut in varying shades of masculinity and femininity are statues of her courtier and overseer of works, Senenmut. One of the most moving depicts him tenderly holding her daughter, Princess Neferure. What was he to Hatshepsut—lover or “her Walter Raleigh?” No one knows. Both he and Neferure vanished from the records after Hatshepsut’s death.

http://www.theweekmagazine.com/review.aspx?id=707

http://www.metmuseum.org/

:) :) :)

(f) (f) 's,

Wyatt the Boxer's Mom, Sweetlady (l) (&) (l)

deliciouslytish

05-10-2006, 05:46 PM

Bravo! Loved the artical and sites..Thanks

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 08:24 PM

Bravo! Loved the artical and sites..Thanks

I appreciate your taking the time to read some of my posts and that you enjoyed them.

(f) (f)

Warmest wishes,

Sweetlady

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 08:34 PM

Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005)(~) (~)

Having already cultivated an offbeat reputation among high society in 1930s London, Laura Henderson (Judi Dench) embarks on her newest adventure: the transformation of an old movie theater into the Windmill, a space that will host, of all things, a nude musical revue. Members of her social circle don't quite know what to make of Mrs. Henderson's controversial enterprise, a shocking venture that has everyone up in arms.

Awards: 2006 BAFTA®: Best Actress nominee: Judi Dench

Cast: Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins, Will Young, Kelly Reilly, Thelma Barlow, Christopher Guest,
Natalia Tena, Rosalind Halstead, Anna Brewster, Elise Audeyev

(*) (*) When one thinks of Stephen Frears, one might think of “Dangerous Liaisons” and “High Fidelity” as I do. If that’s the case, then one also thinks then of the wonderful witty banter that is so predominant in both of these films; “Mrs. Henderson Presents” follows in the same thread. Bob Hoskins and Judi Dench make this an enjoyable treat of a movie with their back and forth banter. It is classic British comedy that embeds itself in playful tongue-in-cheek so that one can become enamoured with the characters before moving into more serious matters; and though the movie takes place during the fire-bombing of London, it emphasizes not the evils of the world but all the simple joys that should be cherished. Though the script is well-written in its back and forth word-play, it is the characters that sustain the film and the superb acting gives everything its depth and nuance that connects the viewer to these people and their intertwining lives. All the characters are vibrant from Hoskins and Dench’s main characters all the way to Christopher Guest’s downplayed Lord Chamberlain, Kelly Reilly’s young statuesque beauty, and Will Young’s lisping male virtuoso of the stage. All in all a fabulous treat for those who enjoy Frears’ movies. This might not be a movie for everyone, but if you enjoy British comedy nuance, wonderful witty banter, and great acting, then I recommend this for you. If you don’t enjoy nuance, I suggest something a bit more blatant like “Wedding Crashers.”:| :| :| ;)

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)(~) (~)

Based on Arthur Golden's novel and set in 1929, this tale follows 9-year-old Chiyo, who is sold to a Kyoto geisha house. Chiyo endures harsh treatment from the owners and head geisha Hatsumomo, who's envious of Chiyo's stunning beauty. Rescued by Hatsumomo's rival, Chiyo blooms in her role as a geisha, but World War II threatens to change her privileged life forever. Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe, Michelle Yeoh and Li Gong star.

Cast: Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe, Koji Yakusho, Michelle Yeoh, Kaori Momoi Yoki Kudo, Li Gong, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Mako, Navia Nguyen, Karl Yune

(*) (*) (*) William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

"[T]he movie works off its trio of delicious star performances, its sumptuous production values, its sprawling sets of old Kyoto, its sweeping John Williams score and haunting cello solos by Yo-Yo Ma.

The score was hauntingly beautiful.....(8) I would see it again. (l)

Have a lovely evening, all.

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady and Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 08:49 PM

forgot that I saw this one twice, once on netflix DVD and again recently on cable. I could not figure out who the actor was playing the pilot until I remembered that he played one of the guards in "The Green Mile".:)

The Snow Walker (2003) (~) (~)

Charles Martin Smith helms this survivalist adventure tale starring Barry Pepper as cocky, hotheaded bush pilot Charlie Halliday. During a routine stop on a supply run in Canada's Northwest Territories, Charlie agrees to transport a critically ill Inuit woman (Annabella Piugattuk) to a Yellowknife hospital. But the plane goes down in the Arctic tundra, leaving the twosome marooned -- and facing the brutality of the looming northern winter.

Cast:
Barry Pepper Annabella Piugattuk
James Cromwell Kiersten Warren
Jon Gries Robin Dunne
Greg Spottiswood Brad Sihvon
Samson Jorah Michael Buble

Review:

(~) This is a beautiful film, with great directing skills, fine performances, and beautiful cinematography, as well as an excellent script. It is a story of transformation--the change that takes place in a pilot for a small freight airline in the Aleutian islands. His plane crashes in the middle of thousands of miles of tundra--his passenger a young Inuit woman sick with tuberculosis. It is the story of a relationship which develops out of their plight as stranded survivors of the crash, and it is carefully crafted to explore the psychological make-up of both, she a traditional woman of her race, yet able to make contact with a man not of her people; he, a cocky ex-WWII bomber pilot, with a fix on the good life of partying and womanizing. Comes the moment of reckoning, and he does not measure to the task ahead of making back to "civilization." What they discover about each other and how it affects them both is the film--and worth every second of the viewer's time.

(*) (*) I don't know how I would fare way out in the tundra, but for an armchair traveler at times, this film was breathtaking. I'd see it again for sure. (l)

(k) (k) 's

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 08:56 PM

They have some very cool ones:

http://www.talkbacktees.com/NewFiles/arts.html

(l) I really loved and bought is: "A room without books is like a body without a soul."
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Another one I loved and bought is: "Television: A Medium. So called because it is neither rare or well done." LOL!!!

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This one is priceless and another one I bought: "There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I erased this line." :| :|

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I got this one too: "The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs."

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I got this one as well: "Put some excitement between your legs. Ride a horse." The shirt is really nice with a great print and cowboy boot. I laughed my ass off when I read that one!

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I didn't get this one but might order it if I move to a left/progressive geographic area in the future (or wear ONLY in the house...):

"So many evangelicals, so few lions." LOL!! LMAO!!! ;)

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http://www.talkbacktees.com/NewFiles/political.html

(*) (*) Lots of very cool sayings here! Some I might not wear in some places though...;)

(k) (k) 's

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 08:59 PM

Montana prepares to implement unique 'Indian education for all' law

© Indian Country Today May 12, 2006. All Rights Reserved

Posted: May 12, 2006

by: David Melmer / Indian Country Today

BILLINGS, Mont. - There are seven reservations in Montana and 12 tribal nations, but most state residents can't identify the reservations or tribes.

That will change, albeit gradually, as the ''Indian Education for All'' law becomes totally integrated in most Montana schools in the kindergarten through 12 grades.

In 1999 the Montana Legislature passed the ''Indian Education for All'' law that recognized the distinct and unique cultural heritage of the American Indians and to commit education goals to preserve that heritage and teach non-Indians as well. Eight percent of the state's population is American Indian.

In 2005 the state Legislature appropriated funding to implement the law and with the direction of the state's Office of Public Instruction the first ever, full-scale Indian education program will be integrated into public instruction in the 2006 - '07 school year.

For now, teachers need to be educated about the culture, history and government, and many have attended workshops and seminars that are funded by the Ready-to-Go grants from the OPI.

The Billings School District, the state's largest, is in close proximity to the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations. Billings partnered with the Little Big Horn Tribal College, the Crow Tribal College and Dull Knife Tribal College on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, and with the Western Heritage Center in Billings, to provide professional training on Crow and Cheyenne cultures and government. Forty teachers completed the program this spring.

''We are close to the Crow reservation and our teachers knew very little about Crow people,'' said Marcia Beaumont, director of Indian education for the Billings School District.

''We tried to get our teachers to know as much about the Crow and Cheyenne as possible,'' she said.

Beaumont, Blackfeet, is an experienced Indian educator and said she laughs at teachers who say that a child has so many gaps in their learning. She said she turns that statement around on the teacher and says that the teacher has huge gaps and lacks knowledge.

The Indian Education for All program is the first of its kind in the nation. Providing Indian education in all schools was directed by the state's constitution and was just recently funded. The $4.4 million for Indian education was awarded by the 2005 state Legislature, and additional funds for colleges and other grant incentives will add up to possibly $20 million, said Carol Juneau, Blackfeet, a state legislator who serves on the Appropriations Committee.

Juneau and other legislators had asked the Legislature for $23 million for Indian education and received only the $4.4 million, but additional funds were added in a special legislative session.

''This is an exciting time in Montana right now. This will give people a good idea of who their Indian neighbors are,'' Juneau said. ''In general there is a lot of hope and expectations. It is great for Indians who live on reservations or in urban areas.''

The state does not mandate a specific curriculum, but does set standards. School districts will be left to their own creativity to integrate American Indian education into every facet of the curriculum from music, science, physical education, reading, art, social sciences and all aspects of school life.

''The whole initiative is a grand experiment, based on the constitution, law and a court case, and we are developing a model to carry this out on a statewide level,'' said Denise Juneau, director of Indian education for the state of Montana.

Most schools are planning some sort of implementation for Indian education.

''We hear every day about what schools plan; they are being very thoughtful, and we recommend they be patient,'' Denise Juneau said.

The state has written a five-year plan that covers all aspects of the implementation of Indian education for all. Not every school will be the same because the state is providing an outline, but the schools do not have to follow the outline verbatim.

''Teachers have to be creative and they have to want this, they have to take ownership. You can give them a vocabulary book, but if they don't take ownership on how much is taught ... It's not as simple as developing curriculum. It's integrating into the system,'' Beaumont said.

The Billings district will hire two new people to act as coordinators, one for elementary and one for secondary schools for the next school year. Beaumont said these coordinators will act like coaches, to make sure the topic is being taught and help with methods and content.

Not all educators will latch onto the Indian education model. According to Beaumont, certain administrators are terrific and will roll up their sleeves and make it happen.

''It's going to happen in some classrooms with some educators, but not all,'' Beaumont said.

She said some of the people she works with in Billings are enthusiastic; there are people who have great ideas and want to make Indian education happen, she said.

Billings is one of 20 school districts that received the Ready-to-Go grant from the state. Billings received $26,000, which was used to partner with the colleges to instruct the educators about the Crow and Cheyenne cultures and government. Those workshops have ended.

In the interim, between school years, Billings's educators will meet to share ideas, develop a model and then speak with other districts about the plans.

Denise Juneau said that is the plan throughout the state: Exchange ideas on how to integrate the information into the existing curriculum, even though every school may not participate in the program.

''Eventually, next year, we will have a best-practices conference for the state. There is a lot of thought to it right now, and because it is so new a big we didn't have any idea what to do or what we wanted to do,'' Juneau said.

Important to the process is research; and students from Montana colleges are now researching the state's education issues and will put the focus on what works and what is positive with this new program, Juneau said.

The state Legislature provided $2 million for the research side of the program.

With the money appropriated so far, the funds the schools receive will be put into their general fund and will be hard to track, Denise Juneau said.

''The schools we talk to are very conscious of this act and they want accountability. This issue will come before the next legislative session,'' she said.

Support for this program comes from the top of the state Office of Public Instruction; while Denise Juneau was the only American Indian education specialist a few years ago, now there are eight staff members in the department. ''They are very professional and know their stuff,'' she said

Available lesson plans

Some lesson plans with data have already been implemented and are available to all school districts in Montana. They are available on DVD with such subject titles as ''American Indian Heritage Days,'' ''Critical Thinking on the Arrival of Columbus,'' ''Mascots Discussion,'' ''Language and Cultural Retention'' and others.

In the Forced Assimilation lesson plan, discussions on boarding schools, prohibition of the Sun Dance and potlatches are to be discussed.

A lesson plan on Non-Western Economic Values discusses the fact that not all cultures view wealth the same way.

Another lesson plan, ''Tribal Diversity,'' tries to accomplish what its title implies - an explanation that all tribes may share some similarities, but they are all different in many aspects of their beliefs, customs and traditions.

''Heroes at Home'' and ''Storytelling'' are two of the other lesson plans available.

To view the entire Indian Education for All program in Montana, visit www.opi.state.mt.us and click on ''Indian education.''

http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096412972

(*) (*) (*) Hear, hear!! Bravo for Montana to set an example for other states to get off their asses about Native American history/herstory.....(u) (u) ....(l) (l) (l)

Respecfully,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 09:01 PM

Indian Country: http://www.indiancountry.com/

(l) (l) (l) (l) (l)

Peace,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 09:03 PM

May 14, 2006 NYTimes

Wagging the Dog, and a Finger

By BETH LANDMAN

ON a sun-drenched weekend last month, cafes from TriBeCa to the Upper West Side were swelling with diners, many of whom left dogs tied to parking meters in deference to Health Department rules that prohibit pets in restaurants. At French Roast on upper Broadway, however, two women sat down to brunch with dogs in tow: a golden retriever and a Yorkie toted in a bag.

"They both said that their animals were emotional service dogs," said Gil Ohana, the manager, explaining why he let them in. "One of them actually carried a doctor's letter."

Health care professionals have recommended animals for psychological or emotional support for more than two decades, based on research showing many benefits, including longer lives and less stress for pet owners.

But recently a number of New York restaurateurs have noticed a surge in the number of diners seeking to bring dogs inside for emotional support, where previously restaurants had accommodated only dogs for the blind.

"I had never heard of emotional support animals before," said Steve Hanson, an owner of 12 restaurants including Blue Fin and Blue Water Grill in Manhattan. "And now all of a sudden in the last several months, we're hearing this."

The increasing appearance of pets whose owners say they are needed for emotional support in restaurants — as well as on airplanes, in offices and even in health spas — goes back, according to those who train such animals, to a 2003 ruling by the Department of Transportation. It clarified policies regarding disabled passengers on airplanes, stating for the first time that animals used to aid people with emotional ailments like depression or anxiety should be given the same access and privileges as animals helping people with physical disabilities like blindness or deafness.

The following year appellate courts in New York State for the first time accepted tenants' arguments in two cases that emotional support was a viable reason to keep a pet despite a building's no-pets policy. Word of the cases and of the Transportation Department's ruling spread, aided by television and the Internet. Now airlines are grappling with how to accommodate 200-pound dogs in the passenger cabin and even emotional-support goats. And businesses like restaurants not directly addressed in the airline or housing decisions face a newly empowered group of customers seeking admittance with their animals.

WHILE most people who train animals that help the disabled — known as service animals — are happy that deserving people are aided, some are also concerned that pet owners who might simply prefer to brunch with their Labradoodle are abusing the guidelines.

"The D.O.T. guidance document was an outrageous decision," said Joan Froling, chairwoman of the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners, a nonprofit organization representing people who depend on service dogs. "Instead of clarifying the difference between emotional support animals who provide comfort by their mere presence and animals trained to perform specific services for the disabled, they decided that support animals were service animals."

No one interviewed for this article admitted to taking advantage of the guidelines, but there is evidence that it happens. Cynthia Dodge, the founder and owner of Tutor Service Dogs in Greenfield, Mass., said she has seen people's lives transformed by emotional-support animals. She has also "run into a couple of people with small dogs that claim they are emotional support animals but they are not," she said. "I've had teenagers approach me wanting to get their dogs certified. This isn't cute and is a total insult to the disabled community. They are ruining it for people who need it."

The 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act states that anyone depending on an animal to function should be allowed full access to all private businesses that serve the public, like restaurants, stores and theaters. The law specifies that such animals must be trained specifically to assist their owner. True service animals are trained in tasks like finding a spouse when a person is in distress, or preventing people from rolling onto their stomachs during seizures.

But now, because the 2003 Department of Transportation document does not include language about training, pet owners can claim that even untrained puppies are "service animals," Ms. Froling said. "People think, 'If the D.O.T. says I can take my animal on a plane, I can take it anywhere,' " she said.

Aphrodite Clamar-Cohen, who teaches psychology at John Jay College in Manhattan and sees a psychotherapist, said her dog, a pit bull mix, helps fend off dark moods that began after her husband died eight years ago. She learned about psychological support pets from the Delta Society, a nonprofit group that aims to bring people and animals together, and got her dog, Alexander, last year. "When I travel I tell hotels up front that 'Alexander Dog Cohen' is coming and he is my emotional-needs dog," she said. She acknowledged that the dog is not trained as a service animal.

"He is necessary for my mental health," she said. "I would find myself at loose ends without him."

It is widely accepted that animals can provide emotional benefits to people. "There is a lot of evidence that animals are major antidepressants," said Carole Fudin, a clinical social worker who specializes in the bond between animals and humans. "They give security and are wonderful emotional grease to help people with incapacitating fears like agoraphobia."

Groups of pet owners with specially trained "therapy dogs" have long visited hospitals and volunteered after disasters. Following the 9/11 attack in New York, 100 therapy dogs were enlisted to comfort victims' families at a special center.

But Dr. Fudin said that emotional reliance on an animal can be taken too far. "If a person can't entertain the idea of going out without an animal, that would suggest an extreme anxiety level," she said, "and he or she should probably be on medication, in psychotherapy or both."

The question of when an animal goes from being a pet that provides love and companionship to an emotional-support animal, without which an owner cannot get through a day, is subjective.

Elicia Brand, 36, said the role her Bernese mountain dog played in her life changed drastically after Ms. Brand suffered severe traumas — being trapped on a subway during the 9/11 attack and being raped the next year. "I am a strong person and it almost did me in," she said of the rape. "My dog was my crutch. If I didn't have him I wouldn't be here now." After Sept. 11, Ms. Brand enrolled her dog in disaster relief training and put him through 10 weeks of training so he could be a therapy animal to others as well as herself. The dog now accompanies her everywhere, even to work. She also sees a therapist and takes medication.

One reason it is difficult to sort out the varying levels of dependency people have on their animals is that it is a violation of the disabilities act to inquire about someone's disability, and although service animals are supposed to be trained, there is no definitive list of skills such animals must have.

"The A.D.A. started with the idea of the honor system," Ms. Froling said. "The goal was to make sure that people with disabilities were not hassled. They didn't list the services an animal should perform because they didn't want to limit creativity, and they didn't want to specify dogs because monkeys were being trained in helpful tasks."

These days people rely on a veritable Noah's Ark of support animals. Tami McLallen, a spokeswoman for American Airlines, said that although dogs are the most common service animals taken onto planes, the airline has had to accommodate monkeys, miniature horses, cats and even an emotional support duck. "Its owner dressed it up in clothes," she recalled.

There have also been at least two instances (on American and Delta) in which airlines have been presented with emotional support goats. Ms. McLallen said the airline flies service animals every day; all owners need to do is show up with a letter from a mental health professional and the animal can fly free in the cabin.

There is no way to know how many of the pets now sitting in coach class or accompanying their owners to dinner at restaurants are trained in health-related tasks. But the fact that dog vests bearing the words "service animal" and wallet-size cards explaining the rights of a support-dog owner are available over the Internet, no questions asked, suggests there is wiggle room for those wishing to exploit it.

One such wallet card proclaims: "This person is accompanied by a Service Dog — an animal individually trained to perform tasks for people with disabilities. Service Dogs are working animals, not pets." On the back is a number to call at the Department of Justice for information about the Americans With Disabilities Act.

One 30-year-old woman, a resident of Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., said she does not see a psychotherapist but suffers from anxiety and abandonment issues and learned about emotional-needs dogs from a television show. She ordered a dog vest over the Internet with the words "service dog in training" for one of the several dogs she lives with, even though none are trained as service animals. "Having my dogs with me makes me feel less hostile," said the woman, who refused to give her name.

"I can fine people or have them put in jail if they don't let me in a restaurant with my dogs, because they are violating my rights," she insisted.

In general, business owners seem to extend themselves to accommodate service animals. Though Completely Bare, a chain of health spas in New York and Palm Beach, Fla., has a policy barring animals in treatment rooms, Cindy Barshop, the company's owner, said that she made an exception for a customer who insisted that she needed her large dog for support while she had laser hair removal. "We had to cover the dog with a blanket to protect its eyes during the procedure," Ms. Barshop said.

One area in which business owners have resisted what they see as abuse of the law is housing. Litigators for both tenants and landlords say cases involving people's demands to have service animals admitted to no-pets buildings in New York have risen sharply in the last two years, with rulings often in the tenants' favor.

"If you have backing of a medical professional and you can show a connection between a disabling condition and the keeping of an animal, I have 99.9 percent success," said Karen Copeland, a tenants' lawyer.

One of her current clients maintains that she needs an animal in her apartment because she is a recovering alcoholic and, apart from her pet, all her other friends are drinkers. Another client, Anthony Milburn, lives in Kew Gardens, Queens, with five cocker spaniels and one mixed breed. He says he has severe chest pains from stress and has a note from a social worker saying that he relies on his pets for his emotional well-being. He is pursuing a case against his landlord.

Bradley Silverbush, a partner at Borah, Goldstein, Altschuler, Schwartz & Nahins, the largest landlord law firm in New York, said people are manipulating the law.

"I'm a dog owner and a dog lover but to claim emotional support is beyond affection," he said. "People send letters from doctors saying the person relies on the animal, or a person has just lost a parent and purchased a Pomeranian. Some doctors will write anything if asked by a patient."

Jerri Cohen, the owner of a jewelry store in Manhattan, said she tried living without animals when she married a man who bought an apartment in a no-dog building. "I went into a severe depression and had to go on medication," she said. "Three years later a friend bought me two pug puppies, and I refused to give them away. My co-op threatened us with eviction. An attorney suggested I get a letter from my psychiatrist. She wrote that I was emotionally needy and the lawyer said that was no good. So she wrote that I can barely function or run my store without them. I won the case.

"They sleep with me," she said. "They have a double stroller. They go to restaurants with me and fly with me."

(*) (*) (l) (l) :) :) I wish I could take Wyatt with me in some places......(l)

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 09:07 PM

May 15, 2006 NYTimes

Op-Ed Columnist

America the Fearful

By BOB HERBERT

In the dark days of the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt counseled Americans to avoid fear. George W. Bush is his polar opposite. The public's fear is this president's most potent political asset. Perhaps his only asset.

Mr. Bush wants ordinary Americans to remain in a perpetual state of fear — so terrified, in fact, that they will not object to the steady erosion of their rights and liberties, and will not notice the many ways in which their fear is being manipulated to feed an unconscionable expansion of presidential power.

If voters can be kept frightened enough of terrorism, they might even overlook the monumental incompetence of one of the worst administrations the nation has ever known.

Four marines drowned Thursday when their 60-ton tank rolled off a bridge and sank in a canal about 50 miles west of Baghdad. Three American soldiers in Iraq were killed by roadside bombs the same day. But those tragic and wholly unnecessary deaths were not the big news. The big news was the latest leak of yet another presidential power grab: the administration's collection of the telephone records of tens of millions of American citizens.

The Bush crowd, which gets together each morning to participate in a highly secret ritual of formalized ineptitude, is trying to get its creepy hands on all the telephone records of everybody in the entire country. It supposedly wants these records, which contain crucial documentation of calls for Chinese takeout in Terre Haute, Ind., and birthday greetings to Grandma in Talladega, Ala., to help in the search for Osama bin Laden.

Hey, the president has made it clear that when Al Qaeda is calling, he wants to be listening, and you never know where that lead may turn up.

The problem (besides the fact that the president has been as effective hunting bin Laden as Dick Cheney was in hunting quail) is that in its fearmongering and power-grabbing the Bush administration has trampled all over the Constitution, the democratic process and the hallowed American tradition of government checks and balances.

Short of having them taken away from us, there is probably no way to fully appreciate the wonder and the glory of our rights and liberties here in the United States, including the right to privacy.

The Constitution and the elaborate system of checks and balances were meant to protect us against the possibility of a clownish gang of small men and women amassing excessive power and behaving like tyrants or kings. But the normal safeguards have not been working since the Bush crowd came to power, starting with the hijacked presidential election in 2000.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, all bets were off. John Kennedy once said, "The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war." But George W. Bush, employing an outrageous propaganda campaign ("Shock and awe," "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud"), started an utterly pointless war in Iraq that he still doesn't know how to win or how to end.

If you listen to the Bush version of reality, the president is all powerful. In that version, we are fighting a war against terrorism, which is a war that will never end. And as long as we are at war (forever), there is no limit to the war-fighting powers the president can claim as commander in chief.

So we've kidnapped people and sent them off to be tortured in the extraordinary rendition program; and we've incarcerated people at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere without trial or even the right to know the charges against them; and we're allowing the C.I.A. to operate super-secret prisons where God-knows-what-all is going on; and we're listening in on the phone calls and reading the e-mail of innocent Americans without warrants; and on and on and on.

The Bushies will tell you that it is dangerous and even against the law to inquire into these nefarious activities. We just have to trust the king.

Well, I give you fair warning. This is a road map to totalitarianism. Hallmarks of totalitarian regimes have always included an excessive reliance on secrecy, the deliberate stoking of fear in the general population, a preference for military rather than diplomatic solutions in foreign policy, the promotion of blind patriotism, the denial of human rights, the curtailment of the rule of law, hostility to a free press and the systematic invasion of the privacy of ordinary people.

There are not enough pretty words in all the world to cover up the damage that George W. Bush has done to his country. If the United States could look at itself in a mirror, it would be both alarmed and ashamed at what it saw.

(*) (*) Herbert is no Maureen Dowd, but he's the second columnist that I read at the Times. He can get pretty incisive. And I agree with the "promoting fear B.S." and especially what he says in the second to last paragraph. THAT in itself is scary there are so many American SHEEP...........:| :| :| :o :o :o

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 09:11 PM

May 15, 2006

At an Industry Media Lab, Close Views of Multitasking

By SHARON WAXMAN

LOS ANGELES, May 14 — In a sleek media lab hidden in a Los Angeles high-rise, some of the country's biggest media companies and their prominent clients are seeking to understand the state of the divided American attention span.

The space looks like the most advanced of homes: the living room is outfitted with the latest in video technology, and in the kitchen, the refrigerator has a television monitor for leaving notes for the children, and for looking up recipes on the Internet.

The installation, the Emerging Media Lab in Los Angeles, is run by the Interpublic Group of Companies, a holding company for ad agencies as well as media buyers like Universal McCann and Initiative. Since February, clients like Sony, L'Oréal and Microsoft have been using it to figure out a central question vexing marketers: how do you reach consumers who seem to be doing so many things simultaneously?

People now surf the Internet while watching television. Their children instant-message friends while listening to music. They all talk on the phone and check their e-mail while they cook.

"Our research showed that people somehow managed to shoehorn 31 hours of activity into a 24-hour day," said Colleen Fahey Rush, executive vice president for research at MTV Networks, which worked with an online research company, OTX, last year. "That's from being able to do two things at once."

As media companies plunk down billions of dollars in advertising at the major networks' fall presentations this week, market researchers are still struggling to understand the realities of what has been called "concurrent media usage."

Thus far, the researchers have found some common ground, but differ widely in crucial areas of interpretation. They do seem to agree on two points: that this kind of multitasking does not apply only to young people and that the amount of time spent multitasking is rising across the board.

For advertisers, the challenge is getting their message across in one medium while the consumer is active at the same time in several others. The buzzword these days is "engagement" — as in how engaged, or involved, the consumer is in a particular activity, a notion that is still relatively new in a media world that has for decades relied on stable indicators like the Nielsen ratings.

The question for programmers is whether it is possible to break through the clutter and offer material that commands more of their viewers' attention, and perhaps more advertising as a result.

In the Emerging Media Lab, major advertisers can observe engagement for themselves, watching consumers try new technologies or use old ones, through cameras that feed back into an observation room.

"Multitasking is not quantified yet," said Greg Johnson, the lab's executive director. "The metrics of all this is a big piece of what our clients want to know, and they want to know desperately. They don't know where their customers are, and it's our job to find them again and what they're doing."

Using the lab themselves, media executives can assess how their ads or other content appear on devices like portable video game players or cellphones.

"You can see things here in context," explained Lori Schwartz, the director of the lab project. Standing in the living room, she wielded a wireless mouse to navigate a media center, a flat-screen monitor on the wall that fed into the Internet, television channels, a DVD player, an Xbox 360 and a stereo system.

"For a lot of our clients, it is hard to keep up," Mr. Johnson said. "It's hard for them to know what to do next when every day there is something new — a blog, a site. They know to move their dollars, but they don't know how much or what media to pick."

Last week, 40 executives from the Sony Corporation of America came to explore the lab's possibilities after one division had tested its video-on-demand service there. "It's another way for us to further understand how consumers are using new media," a Sony spokeswoman, Lisa Davis, said. "We expect the learning here to benefit all of our businesses."

David Sklaver, president of KSL Media, who buys advertising time for clients like Western Union and Bacardi, said multitasking was either "a blessing or a curse" for advertisers. "If someone is watching a TV drama and has CNN News on the Internet," he said, "it's most likely you don't have an engaged viewer." But on the other hand, someone watching a sports event on television could enhance the experience by simultaneously surfing the Internet for game statistics.

A widely cited study conducted last year at Ball State University in Indiana observed 400 people over a broad age range for a day, and found that 96 percent of them were multitasking about a third of the time they were using media. A university white paper recently estimated that consumers spend about nine hours a day in media use, most of it watching television.

The OTX study for MTV used an online sample of 4,213 people, and found that those responding engaged in 15.6 hours of leisure activity a day, which included nonmedia activities like shopping, socializing or eating. Almost a third of that time involved doing more than one thing at a time, the study found.

Most of the multitasking involves television plus another activity, whether reading a newspaper, surfing the Internet or talking on the phone. And when that is the case, which activity is getting primary attention?

On this crucial point, the research differs. In a summary of its latest work on the topic in March, Forrester Research noted that only 11 percent of consumers who went online while watching television said they paid the greatest attention to TV. Some 61 percent paid more attention to the Internet, while 28 percent said they gave equal attention to both. Forrester used on-line surveys of 12,000 people as the basis for its findings.

Ms. Fahey Rush said her research showed something different. "TV is considered the primary media activity when you're doing two things at a time," she said. But when asked how she assessed what people were paying attention to while multitasking, she paused for nearly a minute. "We certainly asked people about how they feel about our brands on a variety of platforms," she said.

David Poltrack, the president of CBS Vision, the network's research arm, said that in the age of multitasking, it was hard to evaluate levels of engagement. "We know people are watching with shared attention," he said. "But we don't know to what degree it's less-than."

It does seem certain, though, that a viewer who is multitasking is not doing those activities with equal interest. "Terms like multitasking imply equal attention," said Mike Bloxham, director of testing and assessment at Ball State. "But cognitive science tells us this isn't possible. You have to give priority to one in order to absorb the messages."

Industry experts say it will be some time before this kind of research results in changes in the pricing of advertisements. IAG Research, a company that measures engagement, has slowly been bringing the television industry around to its measurement approach. In daily online surveys, the company asks respondents substantive questions about the programs and advertisements they watched. The viewer's attentiveness is graded on a scale of 0 to 100, and is not formally used to set advertising rates, but Alan Gould, IAG's chief executive, wonders how long that will last.

"When you have a small but attentive audience, that information can be very important," he said, citing the UPN hit show "Everybody Hates Chris." He said viewers of the program were 27 percent more attentive than those of a normal program. One day, that could mean higher ad rates for such shows that command a greater portion of its viewers' concentration.

"Over time," he said, "I don't see how it doesn't get baked into the equation."

(*) Give me big, open skies or give me death! I can't even imagine having kids with THAT added target demographic. Talk about all five senses being overloaded like in Vegas casinos in your HOME! Not me. :| ;) (S) (S) I love high tech but more often lately, I need peace and quiet......(S) (S)

Have a lovely evening, all.

(k) (k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 09:13 PM

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2006/04/30/MNGJGII7BB1.DTL&o=0

:| :| Too fast for me....;)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 09:17 PM

Basil pathetic, says appeaser Cleese

May 16, 2006

LONDON: John Cleese has finally appeased the Germans, more than 30 years after his goose-stepping performance in Fawlty Towers.

Unlike his alter ego Basil Fawlty, the actor is a keen Germanophile and is playing a prominent role in three projects to encourage a World Cup free from xenophobia and bigotry.

These include sponsoring a children's essay-writing competition called But Don't Mention the War, contributing a matching World Cup anthem and starring in a comedy football film for German television.

The song tackles more delicate territory than England's official World Cup ditty, World at Your Feet, by Embrace.

It calls on football fans to concentrate on the game and abandon outdated prejudices, even if the Germans "bombed our chip shop 60 years ago".

The essay-writing contest has been organised by the German embassy in London, and offers prizes for the best 3000-word essays about modern Germany written by British students.

Cleese, 66, has also joined a host of famous names from the fields of politics, sport and the arts in The Art of Football, a lighthearted documentary for German viewers.

Appearing alongside a German comic, he performs sketches inspired by the "humour, history and general strangeness of the world's most popular game".

Rock singer Bono, Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo, former German player Franz Beckenbauer, former South African president Nelson Mandela and German author Gunter Grass also contribute to the film, endorsed by soccer's ruling body, FIFA.

Cleese said: "I'm delighted to help with trying to break down the ridiculous anti-German prejudices of the tabloids and clowns like Basil Fawlty, who are pathetically stuck in a world view that's more than half a century out of date."

Cleese has spoken in the past of his fondness for German writers such as Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann. "I think the German contribution to literature and philosophy is extraordinary, and to music and science is enormous," he said.

Cleese has always maintained that the notorious sixth episode of Fawlty Towers, which saw Basil goose-stepping round the dining room, ridiculed a certain type of Briton's refusal to forget World War II, not the German characters themselves.

Germany's football-loving ambassador to Britain, Wolfgang Ischinger, has joined the mood of reconciliation. He said the World Cup would present a new image of fun-loving Germans and "show that the cliches and stereotypes of the old days are no longer relevant".

The war may be off-limits, but German TV does not forget other losses. Paired with Cleese's film is The Third Goal, ZDF network's hi-tech look at the disputed third goal against West Germany that helped England win its only World Cup, in 1966. German teams have won twice since then.

http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19149653-29677,00.html

(y) (y)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 09:21 PM

Tougher rules for student residency

Bernard Lane

May 10, 2006

WOULD-BE overseas students whose main motive is migration to Australia would have to think twice before enrolling if radical reform to skilled migration rules goes ahead.

"[The proposed reform is] fairly radical because it means that for most students currently in Australia, they will have to do an extra year [before applying for permanent residency] and even then they're not guaranteed to get PR," Bob Birrell, author of a report for the federal Government, said yesterday.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone and Education Minister Julie Bishop reacted by saying the Government would demand higher English standards and work experience from former overseas students seeking to stay as skilled migrants.

"If PR's your main objective, you'd have to think twice [about enrolling if our reforms are fully implemented]," Dr Birrell said. Immigration experts Lesleyanne Hawthorne and Sue Richardson also wrote the report.

Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee president Gerard Sutton welcomed the Government's announcement, saying bonus points for students with English above the base level would serve as an incentive for those seeking a skilled migration visa.

IDP Australia's chief executive Tony Pollock said the changes should not hurt enrolments providing they were properly explained in overseas markets.

"It may be seen as putting an additional hurdle because students will be required to take that extra year," he said. But Mr Pollock said universities could sell the changes as a positive: Australia was making it clear to would-be student migrants what was expected of them and how they would be helped to attain it.

The Government has yet to detail transitional arrangements or commit to some key recommendations, including that former students not be allowed bonus points for professions in demand, such as accounting, unless they have work experience.

Dr Birrell questioned whether enough work experience positions would be available for graduates facing a tougher test for PR. "It's hard to imagine we're going to have thousands of work experience positions given that employers are becoming somewhat wary about former students," he said.

He said there had been rapid growth in the number of former overseas students securing permanent residency. In 2001-02, the figure was 5284 compared with 12,978 in 2004-05.

This had outstripped the number of would-be skilled migrants applying offshore.

"The main factor driving the growth in overseas student enrolments is people aiming for PR," he said. Chinese and students from the Indian subcontinent dominated; the key disciplines were accounting and information technology.

Presently, these students could win permanent residency with basic English and no work experience relevant to their discipline.

"Many of these students are struggling to gain positions equivalent to their credentials," Dr Birrell said.

http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19080552-12332,00.html

:( :( ..........Oh well.

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 09:28 PM

Monarchs of the mountains

16.05.06 The New Zealand Herald

By Danielle Demetriou

The people who live in the dusty villages in the central highlands of Mexico regard the annual arrival of vast numbers of monarch butterflies in their lonely corner of the world as souls of the dead returning to the sacred mountains.

The butterflies' appearance usually coincides with the most famous of Mexico's national festivals, Los Dias de Muertos (The Days of the Dead) on November 1 and 2.

Scientists attribute the annual pilgrimage to the less romantic concept of magnetic fields. Either way, the sight of millions of what are arguably the most attractive members of the insect world has been widely deemed a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

This odyssey has baffled and entranced spectators for decades. As many as 250 million butterflies travel from North America every year to spend their winter months 3000m up in central Mexico's temperate, fir-topped Sierra Madre mountains.

It is an extraordinary undertaking, and those that arrive in November are generally the great-grandchildren of those that left the previous March, as it takes several generations of butterflies to complete the 4000km commute.

Rising early at a rural hacienda in the heart of the state of Michoacan, west of Mexico City, we drive past rippling lakes and sweeping mountains towards the easternmost edge of the region.

At Sierra Chincua, one of two butterfly sanctuaries open to the public, a gaggle of sparkly-eyed young children clutching boxes of sweets and butterfly-adorned trinkets run up to greet us, crying, "mariposa, mariposa".

There is not a tourism booth, information kiosk or ticket office in sight. Instead, a row of single-storey wooden huts, their bright paint faded and peeling, marks the way to the start of the butterfly hike.

Alfredo Valdez Cruz gravely steps forward to greet us. He holds the respected status of former head of the local ejido - the communal agricultural co-operatives that cover the region. After donning mouth masks for protection against the dust on the route, we follow Cruz as he begins huffing his way up the steep path on foot.

Our early morning ascent is steep and - perched at least 3500m above sea level - quite literally breathtaking. In between puffing amid the plumes of dust raised by the stream of passing horses, we listen to Cruz.

The indigenous communities, which are as remote as they are poor, share a complex relationship with the butterflies. Locals may well have known about the butterflies for centuries, but their existence was only shared with the outside world in 1975, when the zoologist Fred Urquhart ended his 37-year search for the winter resting place of the elusive monarchs, stumbling across their Mexican hideaway.

Though conservationists have successfully battled to preserve the area, which is now a government-protected reserve, locals have found it harder to adapt. Farmers have traditionally cleared areas of woodland for farming, and illegal logging has affected 60 per cent of the area, prompting high penalties, guard patrols and frayed tempers all round.

Pausing to inspect the pointed leaves of an oyamel fir tree, Cruz says: "Things have changed for people in the last 20 years since the area was discovered by the biologist. We have had to change our ways. Five months ago, 250 guards were sent to the area to patrol for illegal logging. Unfortunately, this is the only solution to protect our future."

We reach a clearing that gives way to a sweeping vista of jagged mountains, their silhouettes layered in a pale pink haze. A flame-coloured flicker catches my eye and vanishes through the trees. We are approaching the Holy Grail of our journey.

Another pair of orange butterflies dances across the path, guiding us towards the centre of the butterfly gathering. Standing rooted to the ground, surrounded by millions of butterflies is an overwhelming sensation.

Although they each weigh less than a gram, it becomes clear how their collective weight can snap branches off trees. Orange flickers fill the sky as far as the eye can see. Tree-trunks are cloaked in layered clusters of what appear to be dense orange flowers. When the sun emerges from behind clouds, thousands more butterflies spring to life, joining the whirling blizzard of amber confetti.

The only sound, aside from the gasps of tourists and the click of their cameras, is an otherworldly, gentle pulse, the collective beat of the wings of millions of butterflies.

Reluctantly, we return to reality. Back at the huts, the hospitality of the residents is heart-warming. We eat piles of blue maize tortillas cooked on a makeshift stove along with fried cactus-flower nopalitos (pads), and smoked meat washed down with pink bottles of flavoured soda called "Boing" and thick coffee.

Maria Domitila smilingly sells us her hand-made rugs. Children sell postcards and trinkets adorned with butterflies. It is clear that, despite the tensions in the area, communities are starting to adapt to a presence that is guaranteed to pull in more and more visitors every year.

Butterflies, which visit between November and March, are only one of a number of attractions in Michoacan, however. Amid its strikingly rugged terrain lie hidden colonial cities, lush avocado plantations and a string of colourful villages. Evidence of the Purepecha culture among the indigenous communities of Michoacan, descendants of the pre-Hispanic Tarascos, is highly visible throughout the state, in language and costume to cuisine and artefacts.

Morelia, the state capital, is the prototype of the colonial dream town. Small but perfectly formed and charmingly preserved, it is filled with low-rise colonial buildings, baroque facades and pink-hued walls.

Cafes of students sipping coffee fill the colonnades lining the streets of the historic centre, which is home to the grand cathedral, and a Unesco World Heritage Site.

Every Saturday night the grandiose cathedral, the heart and soul of the city, becomes even more magnetic as its lights are turned on.

This event attracts hordes of over-excited children clutching balloons and dribbling ice-cream alongside their well-dressed and chattering parents. It is one of the social highlights of daily life in Morelia.

After a suspenseful delay (or perhaps just normal life in this part of Mexico), a grand overture of classical music fills the night sky before dramatic lighting slowly inches its way up the majestic edifice, culminating in a noisy firework display.

Surveying the pomp and ceremony around me, I recall the butterfly show. It becomes clear that the most fancy of human fanfares may never be able to compete with nature, but they can at least give it a good shot.

Butterfly Viewing: The butterflies are present from November to March.

Sierra Chincua and San Rosario, both in eastern Michoacan near Angangueo, are the only two "Santuario Mariposa Monarca" open to the public.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/7/story.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=10381674

(l) (l) ....sigh....(l) (l)

Sweetlady and Wyatt the sleeping Boxer Pup (S) (&) (S)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 09:33 PM

Fear the power of the Google Effect

16.05.06 The New Zealand Herald

By Simon Hendery

Google was born as a stack of computers running an innovative internet searching process from the university dorm room of one of its co-founders.

Who would have guessed that eight years later that rack of scavenged PCs would have grown into a global empire powerful enough to make the mighty Microsoft shudder?

And shudder Microsoft has.

When it announced last month it was throwing hundreds of millions of extra research dollars towards its battle with Google, investors panicked. Microsoft shares plunged 11 per cent, wiping almost US$32 billion ($51.3 billion) off the value of the company.

This type of corporate hair-tearing that Microsoft has had to endure now has a name: the Google Effect.

"The Google Effect is really about fear driving internal change in other players like Microsoft," says Chris Loh, a senior telecommunications analyst with research firm IDC in Auckland.

"The thing there is that Google's brand, the obvious innovation inherent in its services, and the depth of its financial position mean that everyone is watching it - especially the telcos - and they're trying to act pre-emptively where possible."

In Microsoft's case, its announcement that it will double its research and development spending on web technology around its MSN search portal - to US$1.1 billion over the next year - signals a desperate desire to win a bigger share of the booming international web advertising market, now dominated by Google.

Ad-supported web-based technology is widely picked as the next big thing.

George Colony, founder and chief executive of research company Forrester, told the Australian newspaper last week that even business software would become free in the future, and would be funded by advertising.

Colony predicts that by 2012, 14 billion devices - both PCs and mobile devices - will be connected to the "extended internet".

"Google could be the centre of the extended internet," he told the paper. "Google could do to software what Apple has done for hardware."

Like its shareholders, Colony worries about Microsoft's answer to this.

"Vista [Microsoft's soon-to-be-launched new operating system] had better be good," he said.

But Microsoft isn't the only company trembling at the prospect of suffering a severe googling. The company seems to instil fear into any industry it sets its sights on, from email to mapping to book publishing to video delivery. Google is even starting to send chills down the collective spines of telecommunications companies.

That particular fear began with rumours last year that Google was about to start buying up "dark fibre" in America and Europe. Dark fibre is unused fibre-optic cable, laid liberally in the ground during the free-spending information technology infrastructure building era before the bursting of the dot.com bubble in 2000.

In New Zealand, Telecom, TelstraClear and Vector have significant fibre networks. All are in use, although industry estimates are that only 10 per cent of these networks' capacity is being used.

Google world domination theorists speculate that acquiring a fibre network and combining it with voice-over-internet (VoIP) applications and wifi networks would make the company an instant telco heavyweight.

That shake-up became more pertinent to New Zealanders a fortnight ago when the Government announced regulatory reforms aimed at opening up Telecom's hold over broadband access.

The reforms include forcing Telecom to provide "naked DSL": a broadband connection into the home or business without an associated phone line rental.

This would allow competitors - and perhaps new non-traditional telco investors - to sell customers competitively priced VoIP services.

Sydney-based analyst Paul Budde estimates that less than 1 per cent of calls in New Zealand are currently made using VoIP services such as Skype.

But with unbundling and naked DSL, Telecom's competitors will be able to sell broadband and VoIP packages, bringing VoIP into the mainstream.

"So while it's not big now it will grow quite substantially and in five to 10 years' time all our calls will be over VoIP," Budde says.

Loh says the arrival of a viable VoIP alternative will put about half of Telecom's revenue at risk - the approximately $2 billion a year it earns from line rentals and long-distance calls.

"Until now line rental has been locked in there, but now naked DSL means this can be bypassed, so up to 50 per cent of Telecom's revenue is under threat from other providers, both locally and internationally," Loh says.

Telecom said last week that its senior management were working a strategy for the company's "new direction" in the unbundled environment.

This would include "implementing voice over internet options for business and residential customers", the company said.

Matt Crockett, general manager of Telecom's wired division, says the company realises there is a big market for VoIP.

"Globally there are many providers of internet-quality voice services and a number of telcos have partnered with them to offer their services - an example being BT, who have partnered with Yahoo to provide internet voice."

Crockett says there are a wide range of services that telco companies can deliver through partnerships with internet application providers.

"Our MSN relationship is an example of this type of arrangement, and numerous providers around the world can demonstrate successful partnerships like this," he says.

Google itself is getting into the VoIP game with its Skype-like Google Talk application, released last year. The company is expected to add video calling to the software, much as Skype has.

Additionally, Google is in the process of introducing free wifi internet access in San Francisco and other US cities - a move it could choose to duplicate elsewhere.

A source inside the company said Google was using any networks it had acquired for internal purposes, but it had no plan to offer direct services to the public.

"We need the capacity to make our stuff work and we can't really have a mix of public and internal traffic in the same system. To achieve performance levels, we need direct control of all traffic sources on our internal network," the source said. The source did not, however, rule out that Google could at some point offer internet access services to the public in some form.

Loh says a prime opportunity exists for Google around the hugely popular web community sites such as MySpace, which was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation for US$580 million this year.

The business model could include delivering content, paid for by the user, into these communities and it would be very easy to include VoIP applications as part of such a package.

"It will basically mean that every computer in the world that is connected [to the internet] can act as a communications platform.

"It will really shake things up," Loh says.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=188&objectid=10381932

(*) (*) Speaking of which, I'm getting Skype. I've tried it and it's going to to huge for distance learning and other apps in addition to very cheap International calls. The quality is amazing!

Ah, being such a grrl-propeller-head.....(h) (h) (i) (i) ;)

(S) (S)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 09:46 PM

http://www.pistolwimp.com/media/45516/

:o :o

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 09:54 PM

When did Ed Whitacre start writing for the Associated Press? Because frankly this "High-Definition Video Could Choke Internet" story on the wire today sounds like just the sort of argument the AT&T CEO might make (see "Don't worry, we won't degrade your service. Of course I can't speak for Google, Yahoo or any of those other freeloaders."). One of the story's contentions -- that the distribution of high quality video over the Internet will put undue strain on backbone networks unless telecoms are allowed to charge content providers additional fees to ensure its delivery -- is one we've all heard before (see "'Course what we'd really like to do is 'prioritize' some of these services right out of business ..."), and frankly it's getting a little tired. Content providers and consumers both already pay for the bandwidth they use -- the telecoms are charging for it at both ends of the same pipe. Nobody is getting a free ride. Why is it that the telecoms feel entitled to charge us a third time?

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/14579901.htm

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2006/03/_q_how_concerne.html

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2006/01/net_neutrality_.html

:@ :@ Grrrr...to those darn telecom firms. They really stick it to both consumers as well as consultants they sign contracts with and then stiff them on unpaid invoices for work done and digned-off on like $20K (with one long distance company) and $40K (with an equipment manufacturer). I hate how they treat the little people like me and other one-person consultancies. But, hey? Does this keep me awake? Apparently not...:| ;) :)

LIFE IS TOO SHORT............Cape Diem!

(f) (f) 's

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 10:01 PM

Web 2.0 audience apparently composed entirely of Web 2.0 entrepreneurs:

From Josh Kopelman at Redeye VC comes a timely reminder to all of us in the geographic and virtual Silicon Valley that we are living, as Max Headroom did, 20 minutes into the future. Kopelman hears all the Web 2.0 pitches but is tethered to the real world by virtue of his East Coast location. "Over the last several weeks, I've been on several phone pitches from west-coast companies that are looking to be the 'flickr of XXXX' or 'like del.icio.us but YYYY' or 'the Digg killer,' " he writes. "It got me thinking - how many people outside of the valley have ever heard of these companies? I asked a bunch of local (Philly-area) acquaintances and the answer came back loud and clear: none - nada - zip.

People here have barely heard of Myspace and Craigslist - let alone any of the 'hot' Web 2.0 companies." He goes on: "Too many companies are targeting an audience of 53,651. That's how many people subscribe to Michael Arrington's TechCrunch blog feed. I'm a big fan of Techcrunch - and read it every day. However, the Techcrunch audience is NOT a mainstream America audience. ... If we could get access to the usage logs of the top 10 Web 2.0 properties, I would bet that their 10,000 most active users would all be the same." VC Brad Feld thinks Kopelman nailed it and says he tells Web 2.0 startups that "the first 25,000 users are irrelevant." And David Beisel at Genuine VC says the greater issue is that "all users are not created equal."

"In the end, having 53,651 users is a relative number for any consumer-facing web service.
... What I would want to know is who they are, how they got there, and why they're using the site."

http://redeye.firstround.com/2006/05/53651.html

http://techcrunch.com/

http://www.feld.com/blog/archives/001692.html

http://www.genuinevc.com/archives/2006/05/all_users_are_n.htm

(*) (*) "In the end, having 53,651 users is a relative number for any consumer-facing web service.... What I would want to know is who they are, how they got there, and why they're using the site."

(i) (i) Yea, me too!

;)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-15-2006, 10:05 PM

http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news-11718-A+bit+of+Sci-Fi+from+Kowon.html

YATGD = Yet Another Tech-Geek Device. Yes, I just thought of it. ;)

I just gotta cut down on the coffee....(c) . Not really.

(k) (k) 's & ({) (}) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-18-2006, 02:58 PM

21st Century Dilemmas: Balance, Integration or Learning it all? Hypotheses from the front line.

Marcia Conner and Brook Manville

In an age where the markets influence our moods, mercies, and marriages, we thought it time to break from the business of learning, per se, to focus on its place in what matters most. Each of us works hard to create time each day, amongst our agendas and emergencies, to learn. We can do so because we’ve both accepted it as a necessity while also making it somewhat of a hobby. Here are the reigning truths that help us through.

1. Out with Balance, in with Choice. The term balance is a legacy from the years we worked to “have it all,” implying we must juggle everything so it fits on some tightrope-walking life. Get over it; no one can do it ALL, whether living, working, or learning. Learn your limits. Realize we will have to make choices and accept that sometimes they won’t always be right.

2. A Big Choice Is Integration. The happier people are finding ways to integrate work and learning, learning and life in mutually reinforcing ways. Learn how to integrate. For each of us, that has meant simplifying the simplifiable, and focusing on what matters most. We get to choose what and when to focus.

3. Don’t Have It All; Be It All. The New Economy requires each of us learn to bring all of our self to work: rested, well-fed, confident, healthy, and well-educated. It’s the only way to produce extraordinary, sustainable results under heavy deadlines.

4. Gnothi Seauton (Know Thyself). Work/life learning is as much about self-knowledge as job-knowledge. You’ll never apply your skills and experience without taking time to learn self-awareness of your values, priorities, and talents.

5. Be Your Own Learning Hub. In the learner-centric revolution, you stand at the center of tools, experiences, resources, and relationships. Learn from every encounter. Move beyond dichotomies and “either/or” thinking to embrace the ecology all around you. Raising a family, nourishing warm relationships with a spouse, and getting along with parents as they age is an education like none other. Don’t neglect these learnings while focused on work.

6. Small Steps to Start the Long Journey. If learning is everywhere, and all the time, mark success in measurable spoonfuls. Focus and master a new email technique; learn yoga for your airplane trips; take one lesson from history and apply it to your job. Find victories in small moments and all along your path.

7. Teach Once, Learn Twice. Look for opportunities at home, work, and in between to teach someone something new. Do so and you’ll know what you’re learning twice as much as before.

8. Socialize Learning, Learning Socializes. On and off the job, use relationships, conversations, and people experiences to reinforce what you know and what you need to learn. Use your social networks to reflect on your life—all aspects of your life.

9. Manage Technology as Both an Asset and a Cost. Technology shifts time, but also steals it. Use technology to enrich your commuting time, late night research capabilities, or job-related skill building. But have no illusions about your disengagement from other human activities—what you’re NOT doing when you plug yourself in. Be self aware of the social capital you spend when you retreat to the computer or other mechanical device.

10. Breathe More. Complain less. Find more reasons to laugh. Vita brevis, no?

http://www.linezine.com/5.2/articles/mcbm21cd.htm

:o I found this during research for my two weekly duscussion questions yesterday. I thought it applied so nicely into life as well. :)

({) ({) (}) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-18-2006, 03:03 PM

This 2005 article reports on the availability, domain distribution, percentage of Web sites versus Web pages, perceived value, and category of 31,400 Web/no spamming of other sites/based resources selected by 50 public libraries in the United States and Canada. Eighty/no spamming of other sites/seven percent of these resources were available, 60 percent were Web pages, and resources selected by 20 percent of the sampled libraries were finding tools such as general or subject specific search engines. Ninety/no spamming of other sites/three percent of the resources were selected by just one of the 50 libraries; only 17 percent of the resources appeared to be primarily of local interest. The public may be unaware of these unique resources. The public library community must develop programs to increase the awareness and sharing of these evaluated resources.

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_8/prabha/index.html

:) :) Wow.....what an amazing article, eh? One of the issues reminds me of the search word challenges that video and film libraries faced during the early 1990's when they wanted to worry first about video compression. I told them that they needed a good IT database first. Often regional and then cultural terminology returned quite different results and alot of the clips metadata was in the heads of the tape librarians! A brook is not a stream in some locales...;)

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-18-2006, 03:07 PM

http://www.zoomcoin.com/shipofgold/historical.htm

(*) (*) (*) Gold stars....literally.;)

I need some coffee.....(c)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-18-2006, 03:10 PM

<sigh>....and I frequented many places like this when I lived in the Redwoods and "commuted" for groceries, etc. 22 miles each way out to Route 1, Pacific Coast Highway and north to Half Moon Bay and back in the late 1980s. If I forgot milk for my morning coffee, I remembered to get canned milk and "instant moo" for future times. 44 miles to the nearest market - now THAT was heaven....(a)

I remember being extremely skeptical the first time I tried one of these restaurants and now I wish the East Coast had some!

http://www.veggiediner.com/menus/dinnertext.html

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-18-2006, 03:15 PM

Their ad in "The Nation" is pretty compelling, but I still want to visit someday.

www.friendsofanimals.org

They say in their ad, "If you shoot wolves to save moose and then you shoot the moose, you are either out of your mind or in Alaska."

:| :| :| :| :|

(i) (i) Makes sense but I believe tourists like me who want to visit and have nothing to do with hunting shouldn't boycott the state. What say you? I still plan on going there, especially when I see on weather.com that temperatures in northwestern Alaska are nice and chilly. It seems like Anchorage, Fairbanks and the southeastern parts of the state are very rainy now. Hmmm, it was like that in San Francisco and I lived there for seven years. The big difference though? San Francisco did not have the number of and size of mosquitos like Alaska does...:o

<scratching my arm just remembering since I am allergic t them...lol>

Hugs,
Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-18-2006, 03:18 PM

Riverbend Hot Springs (Inn)

www.truthorconsequencesnm.com

(h) (h) COOL!

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-18-2006, 03:20 PM

Brampton Bed and Breakfast Inn:

www.Bramptoninn.com

(*) (*) Wyatt has had all of his shots so can go to a really nice kennel.....hmm, I think some day I am taking a few day break. I could not believe 600 count sheets. THAT's a bed I want to sleep in......(S) (S) ....or something....(a) (a) ;)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-18-2006, 03:22 PM

The lady propeller-head is baaaaack......

...at least according the Philadelphia Inquirer, these are the best video sites:

1. www.video.google.com

2. www.youtube.com

3. www.triggerstreet.com

(y) (y) (y) Pretty good ones and worth the visits.(h) (h)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (k) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-18-2006, 03:27 PM

http://img252.echo.cx/img252/8159/006wo.swf

:D :D The "DO NOT PRESS" button reminds me of the one from my engineering days. An engineer there put in a switch at the producers' desk out in L.A.

It was a pushbutton with a lit display that said "PUSH TO TEST."

When the button was pushed, the display changed to "RELEASE TO DETONATE."

The engineers used to love the panicked looks on the faces of the producers, with their finger still holding the button down for dear life, who needed to be "rescued."

Those were the good old days...of playing tricks in the workplace. Playing tricks I said.....;-)

(6) (6) I know, as Josephine Marcus told Wyatt Earp under the old oak tree outside the Tombstone outskirts, "Oh don't say it, I know I'm so bad..":) :) (from the film "Tombstone", 1993)

Enjoy the rest of your Thursday, wherever you are.

({) (}) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-18-2006, 03:32 PM

Published: Tuesday, May 16, 2006

The Apple business model now has edge on Microsoft

By Walter Mossberg

For many years, there have been two models of how to make computers and other digital devices. One is the component model, championed by Microsoft. The other is the end-to-end model, championed by Apple.

In the component model, many companies make hardware and software that run on a standard platform, creating inexpensive commodity devices that don't always work perfectly together, but get the job done. In the end-to-end model, one company designs both the hardware and software, which work together, but the products cost more and limit choice.

In the first war between these models, the war for dominance of the personal computer market, Microsoft's approach won decisively. Aided by efficient assemblers such as Dell, and by corporate IT departments that integrate the components, Microsoft's component-based Windows platform crushed Apple's end-to-end Macintosh platform.

But in the post-PC era we're in today, where the focus is on music players, game consoles and cell phones, the end-to-end model is the early winner. Tightly linking hardware, software and Web services propelled Apple to a huge success with its iPod. Microsoft, meanwhile, has struggled to make its component model work on these devices and, in a telling sign, is using the Apple end-to-end model itself in its Xbox game-console business.

Now, Apple is working on other projects built on the same end-to-end model as the iPod, including a media-playing cell phone and a home-media hub.

The jury is still out on whether the end-to-end model will prevail in the long term. Many at Microsoft believe the new devices will eventually succumb to the component model and that Apple's success with the iPod will fade, just as its early dominance of the PC market did. Apple officials say history won't repeat itself if the company continues to make great products and avoids the business blunders of the past.

I think the end-to-end model could prevail this time, both for Apple and other companies. Consumers want choice and low prices. But they also crave simplicity and integration, which the end-to-end model delivers best.

Critics attack the iPod and iTunes as "closed" and "proprietary" because the songs Apple sells at its iTunes Music Store play only on iPods, and iPods can't play songs purchased from other music stores. But both the iPod and iTunes handle the two most common open audio formats, MP3 and WAV, and the most common open video format, MP4. They work well even if you never buy a song from Apple.

And iTunes and the iPod work on Windows computers, not just on Macs. So how is that closed?

Even the Mac isn't as closed as its critics charge. It's still designed to work with Apple's own operating system and software. But it can handle all the common files Windows uses, can network with Windows machines and can use all of the common Windows printers, scanners, keyboards and mice. The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows. The newest Macs can even run Windows itself.

You do get a choice of more software with Windows. And that's great for hard-core gamers and users of corporate, or niche, software. But for mainstream users doing typical tasks, the Windows choice advantage is illusory. Mac users can choose among thousands of third-party programs, including multiple Web browsers, word processors and e-mail programs. They can run Mac versions of popular software such as Microsoft Office and the Firefox browser. How much more choice do you need?

Microsoft is hedging its bets. It has, in effect, created a little Apple inside Microsoft with the Xbox group. The Xbox team shunned Windows and wrote its own operating system and user interface, and built its own hardware. The new Xbox was even developed using Macintosh computers.

Some Microsoft officials dismiss this anomaly by claiming that the game-console business is a special case. But now, Microsoft has assigned the Xbox team to create a portable music player it hopes can challenge the iPod. Why? Because the company is frustrated that the component model, which separates hardware and software, has failed in the music market. It's looking for more integration.

Still, the end-to-end model isn't a lock. If Apple can't keep churning out cool products at reasonable prices, it could crash and burn. Unlike Microsoft, it doesn't have much help from other companies. But the iPod experience has shown that the PC model may not be best for all digital devices.

Walter Mossberg writes about personal technology for The Wall Street Journal.

http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/05/16/100bus_mossberg001.cfm

:) :) (h) (h) I just got to love this latest article's announcement since I have always said that the Windows Operating System is like putting a blonde wig on a gorilla as DARTH Gates tried to "ape" the Mac user interface......LMAO........;)

(k) (k) 's

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-20-2006, 09:11 PM

1. The check is in the mail.
2. I'll respect you in the morning.
3. I'm from the government, and I am here to help you.
4. It's only a cold sore.
5. You get this one, I'll pay next time.
6. My wife doesn't understand me.
7. Trust me, I'll take care of everything.
8. Of course I love you.
9. I am getting a divorce.
10. Drinking? Why, no, Officer.
11. I never inhaled.
12. It's not the money, it's the principle of the thing.
13. I never watch television except for PBS.
14. ...but we can still be good friends.
15. She means nothing to me.
16. Dont worry, I can go another 20 miles when the gauge is on "empty."
17. I gave at the office.
18. Don't worry, he's never bitten anyone.
19. I'll call you later.
20. We'll release the upgrade by the end of the year.
21. Read my lips: no new taxes
22. I've never done anything like this before
23. Now, I'm going to tell you the truth
24. It's supposed to make that noise.
25. I *love* your new _____!
26. ...then take a left. You can't miss it.
27. Yes, I did.
28. Don't worry, it's OK -- I'm sterile.

And the 29th biggest lie...

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky."

:| :| :|

;) ;)

:)

(k) (k) 's

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-20-2006, 09:12 PM

For years and years they told me,
Be careful of your breasts.
Don't ever squeeze or bruise them.
And give them monthly tests.

So I heeded all their warnings,
And protected them by law.
Guarded them very carefully,
And I always wore my bra.

After 30 years of astute care,
My gyno, Dr. Pruitt,
Said I should get a Mammogram
"O.K," I said, "let's do it."

"Stand up here real close" she said,
(She got my boob in line),
"And tell me when it hurts," she said,
"Ah yes! Right there, that's fine."

She stepped upon a pedal,
I could not believe my eyes!
A plastic plate came slamming down,
My hooter's in a vise!

My skin was stretched and mangled,
From underneath my chin.
My poor boob was being squashed,
To Swedish Pancake thin.

Excruciating pain I felt,
Within it's vise-like grip.
A prisoner in this vicious thing,
My poor defenseless tit!

"Take a deep breath" she said to me,
Who does she think she's kidding?!?
My chest is mashed in her machine,
And woozy I am getting.

"There, that's good," I heard her say,
(The room was slowly swaying.)
"Now, let's have a go at the other one."
Have mercy, I was praying.

It squeezed me from both up and down,
It squeezed me from both sides.
I'll bet SHE'S never had this done,
To HER tender little hide.

Next time that they make me do this,
I will request a blindfold.
I have no wish to see again,
My knockers getting steam rolled.

If I had no problem when I came in,
I surely have one now.
If there had been a cyst in there,
It would have gone "ker-pow!"

This machine was created by a man,
Of this, I have no doubt.
I'd like to stick his balls in there,
And see how THEY come out!

;) ;)

SL

sweetlady

05-20-2006, 09:13 PM

Couldn't celebrate Mother's Day with my mom, but saw this and wanted to pass it along for the thoughts behind it:

Let's Wear Purple Hats!

In honor of women's history month and in memory of Erma Bombeck who lost her fight with cancer. Here is an angel sent to watch over you. Pass this on to five women that you want watched over. If you don't know five women to pass this on to, one will do just fine.

IF I HAD MY LIFE TO LIVE OVER - by Erma Bombeck

(written after she found out she was dying from cancer).

I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day.

I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.

I would have talked less and listened more.

I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained, or the sofa faded.

I would have eaten the popcorn in the 'good' living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.

I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.

I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband.

I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.

I would have sat on the lawn with my grass stains.

I would have cried and laughed less while watching television and more while watching life.

I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn't show soil, or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.

Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.

When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now go get washed up for dinner." There would have been more "I love you's." More "I'm sorry's."

But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute...look at it and really see it .. live it .and never give it back. Stop sweating the small stuff.

Don't worry about who doesn't like you, who has more, or who's doing what.

Instead, let's cherish the relationships we have with those who do love us.

Let's think about what God HAS blessed us with. And what we are doing each day to promote ourselves mentally, physically, emotionally. I hope you all have a blessed day.

Beautiful Women's Month

Age 3: She looks at herself and sees a Queen.

Age 8: She looks at herself and sees Cinderella.

Age 15: She looks at herself and sees an Ugly Sister (Mum I can't go to school looking like this!)

Age 20: She looks at herself and sees "too fat/too thin, too short/too tall, too straight/too curly"- but decides she's going out anyway.

Age 30: She looks at herself and sees "too fat/too thin, too short/too tall, too straight/too curly" - but decides she doesn't have time to fix it, so she's going out anyway.

Age 40: She looks at herself and sees "clean" and goes out anyway.

Age 50: She looks at herself and sees "I am" and goes wherever she wants to go.

Age 60: She looks at herself and reminds herself of all the people who can't even see themselves in the mirror anymore. Goes out and conquers the world.

Age 70: She looks at herself &sees wisdom, laughter and ability, goes out and enjoys life.

Age 80: Doesn't bother to look. Just puts on a purple hat and goes out to have fun with the world.

Send this on to all the women you are grateful to have as friends. Maybe we should all grab that purple hat earlier.

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-20-2006, 09:15 PM

A bus carrying only ugly people crashes into an oncoming truck and
everyone inside dies. When they get to meet their Maker, because of
the grief they have experienced, He decides to grant them one wish each
before they enter Heaven.

They're all lined up, and God asks the first one what her wish is. "I
want to be gorgeous." So God snaps His fingers, and it is done. The second
one in line hears this and says, "I want to be gorgeous too." Another snap
of His fingers and the wish is granted.

This goes on for a while with each one asking to be gorgeous but when
God is halfway down the line, the last guy in the line starts laughing.
When there are only ten people left, this guy is rolling on the floor,
laughing his head off..

Finally, God reaches this last guy and asks him what his wish will be.
The guy eventually calms down and says: "Make 'em all ugly again."

So, the next time you are last in line...smile!

(k) (k) 'S & ({) (}) 'S

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-20-2006, 09:17 PM

THE BRICK

A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street,
going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting
out from between parked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw
something. As his car passed, no children appeared. Instead, a brick
smashed into the Jag's side door! He slammed on the brakes and backed the
Jag back to the spot where the brick had been thrown. The angry driver
then jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid and pushed him up
against a parked car shouting, "What was that all about and who are you?
Just what the heck are you doing? That's a new car and that brick you
threw is going to cost a lot of money. Why did you do it?" The young boy was
apologetic. "Please, mister...please, I'm sorry but I didn't know what else
to do," He pleaded. "I threw the brick because no one else would stop..."
With tears dripping down his face and off his chin! ! , the youth pointed
to a spot just around a parked car. "It's my brother," he said. "He rolled off
the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can't lift him up." Now
sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, "Would you please help me get
him back into his wheelchair? He's hurt and he's too heavy for me." Moved
beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in
his throat. He hurriedly lifted the handicapped boy back into the wheelchair,
then took out a linen handkerchief and dabbed at the fresh scrapes and
cuts. A quick look told him everything was going to be okay. "Thank you and may
God bless you," the grateful child told the stranger. Too shook up for
words, the man simply watched the boy! push his wheelchair-bound brother
down the sidewalk toward their home.

It was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar. The damage was very
noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door.
He kept the dent there to remind him of this message: "Don't go through life
so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention!"
God whispers in our souls and speaks to our hearts. Sometimes when we don't
have time to listen, He has to throw a brick at us. It's our choice to listen or
not.

Thought for the Day:

If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.
If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it.
He sends you flowers every spring.
He sends you a sunrise every morning

Face it, friend - He is crazy about you!

Send this to every "beautiful person" you wish to bless.

God didn't promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow,sun without
rain, but He did promise strength for the day, comfort for the tears, and
light for the way. Read this line very slowly and let it sink in... If God
brings you to it, He will bring you through it.

(S) (S) Have a lovely weekend!!

Love, peace and hugs,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

Tashi

05-20-2006, 10:50 PM

sweetlady

05-25-2006, 06:24 PM

HI Sweetlady I am enjoying your thread very much. I lived in Japan for a while and .I noted the post on the Japanese cultural ‘ gift giving’. The practice is charming for the most part however it is also a way of cutting throats. In the Japanese culture it is probably the most subtle surprising power game of one-up manship I have ever watched.
I also enjoy many facets of the culture while there but my favorites were the large turtleback tombs , fireflys and the O Bon celebrations. (similar to the day of the dead festival in the Mexican culture). It is alot of fun. I am always so happy to meet a fellow traveler and hear the stories . Hello and Glad to meet you ..Thank you....
Whisper
Tashi

:) :) I appreciated reading your thoughtful post as well as learning more about the ritual of gift-giving in Japan. It's wonderful to virtually "meet" a fellow world traveler who embraces new learning experiences every day. Isn't the immersion in other cultures one of life's absolutely precious gifts? I cannot even imagine what it must be like to never have had those opportunities for travel which seems to make my sense of adventure all the more keen...;) Experiencing the rituals of other cultures seems to deepen acceptance and support embracing the unknowns inherent in dramatic time and geographical distances, in my view.

I really look forward to reading more of your stories and sharing of experiences. (f) (f)

Thanks again and Warmest wishes,

Sweetlady

sweetlady

05-25-2006, 06:36 PM

1. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

(~) Cheese-loving eccentric Wallace and his cunning canine pal, Gromit, investigate a vegetarian mystery in Nick Park's animated adventure. The lovable inventor and his intrepid pup run a business ridding the town of bugs, using only humane methods that turn their home into a halfway house for evicted vermin. Their work leads them to investigate the mystery of a voracious vegetarian monster who threatens to ruin the annual veggie-growing contest.

(~) Review: What a genius film! If you've enjoyed the previous adventures of Wallace and Gromit, this one will be no exception. Kids will love it on one level, and of course adults will love a lot of the in-jokes that will sail clear over the kids' heads. Look for lots of references and parodies of other great films. Lots of Englishness that adds a ton of charm to the film, as well. A guaranteed good time will be had by all.

(*) I gave it five stars for the outstanding claymation 3D animations as well as the great story full of double entredres and "quick, you might miss it" moments if the viewer wasn't paying attention. Nick Parks' fabulous creations Wallace and Gromit are as always, superb. (*) (*)

2. Stone Cold (2005)

Adapted from a novel by Robert B. Parker, this made-for-TV drama stars Tom Selleck as Jesse Stone, a jaded Los Angeles detective who takes a job as the police chief of a quiet coastal town in Maine. The hard-drinking Stone maintains a low profile, but when a corpse washes ashore and multiple assailants rape a high school student, the former big-city cop goes into action. Among the supporting cast are Mimi Rogers, Viola Davis and Stephen McHattie.

Cast:
Mimi Rogers Tom Selleck
Jane Adams Reg Rogers
Viola Davis Alexis Dziena
Kohl Sudduth Polly Shannon
Stephen McHattie Vito Rezza

Jane Adams and Reg Rogers have played crazy characters on "Law and Order" for sure and I think and N.Y.P.D. Blue.

(~) Review: “Stone Cold” stars Tom Selleck, in a solid performance as Jesse Stone, a somewhat depressed, dysfunctional cynical and alcoholic small-town police chief who plays by his own rules. The plot evolves slowly, but in an interesting and engaging way. It’s as much a character study as it is a murder mystery. I loved it when the city council, in an effort to force Chief Stone into doing things their way, reminds him that they have the power to fire him. His non-plussed response is, “You can fire me, but you can’t tell me what to do.” He then calmly leaves and goes about his business while they’re left sitting there with their mouths open. Deserving special mention are Jane Adams and Reg Rogers in delightfully contemptible supporting roles, Viola Davis as one of his total of four police officers on the force and Polly Shannon in a wonderfully understated role as “the love interest.” If you’re a Tom Selleck fan, you’ll enjoy this movie.

3. The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999)

In this illuminating, made-for-cable drama, novelist and iconoclast Ayn Rand (Helen Mirren) uses her objectivist philosophy to rationalize a torrid, 15-year affair with her handsome young protege, Nathaniel Branden (Eric Stoltz). Christopher Menaul directed the film, which is based on the autobiography of Branden's long-suffering wife, Barbara (played by Julie Delpy). Peter Fonda shines as Frank O'Connor, Rand's aggrieved spouse.

Cast:
Helen Mirren Eric Stoltz
Julie Delpy Peter Fonda
Sybil Temchen Tom McCamus

I really enjoy watching Helen Mirren's performances!

(~) Review: This entertaining film is an outsider's view of the affair between Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand. For an insider's view I highly recommend Nathaniel Branden's book, "My Years with Ayn Rand." The pages turn themselves. The film is worth watching, but only touches on Rand's philosophy. If you want to experience the heart of Ayn Rand's approach to life, read John Galt's speech in "Atlas Shrugged."

Good ol' HBO saw the potential: torrid affair, lots of books sold, presold audience. They hadn't a clue what Rand was saying, but they knew a racy outline when they saw it. Helen Mirren conveys the intellect and the steel in this woman, and there's some hint of what kept her long marriage to Frank O'Connor alive. The film fails utterly to convey her despair at his death, being much more interested in her Mrs. Robinson-style seduction of Nathaniel Branden. Barbara Branden's book was surprisingly objective, given her position... The problem I had was that the film was so much more about Barbara - her despair, her confusion ("If you're jealous, it's your fault") and her misery. The morose jazz score is appropriate for Barbara, but totally out of character for Rand. I kept waiting for them to get to Rand. We get hints, but only of her lowbrow side. "I love Charlie's Angels." She also read Aristotle. Yes, she did despise the conservatives because of their religiosity - Rand was a thumping atheist. It's amazing that films have ignored this firebrand for as long as they have. It's an imperfect film, but it is about one of the most important counterrevolutionaries of the 20th century. Yes, she slept with one of her students. One of her other students has been chairman of the Federal Reserve board (Alan Greenspan). There's more of a story here, yet to be told.

Carpe Diem,

Swetlady

sweetlady

05-25-2006, 06:40 PM

Ghosts Of The White House

One night, George W. Bush is tossing restlessly in his White House bed
he awakens to see George Washington standing by him Bush asks him,
"George, what's the best thing I can do to help the country?" "Set an honest and
honorable example, just as I did," Washington advises, and then fades away...

The next night, Bush is astir again, and sees the ghost of Thomas
Jefferson moving through the darkened bedroom. Bush calls out, "Tom,
please! What is the best thing I can do to help the country?" "Respect the
Constitution, as I did," Jefferson advises, and dims from sight.

The third night sleep is still not in the cards for Bush. He awakens to
see the ghost of FDR hovering over his bed. Bush whispers, "Franklin,
What is the best thing I can do to help the country?" "Help the less fortunate,
just as I did," FDR replies and fades into the mist.

Bush isn't sleeping well the fourth night when he sees another figure
moving in the shadows. It is the ghost of Abraham Lincoln Bush pleads,
"Abe, what is the best thing I can do right now to help the country?" Lincoln
replies, "Go see a play."

:o :o :| :| ;) ;) I LOVE it! "Lincoln replies, "Go see a play." LMAO!

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the napping Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-25-2006, 06:41 PM

George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are flying on Air Force One.
The President looks at the Vice President, chuckles, and says, "You know,
I could throw a $1,000 bill out the window right now and make somebody very happy."

The Vice President shrugs and says, "Well, I could throw 10 $100 bills
out the window and make 10 people very happy."

Not to be outdone, the Secretary of Defense says, "Of course, then, I
could throw 100 $10 bills out the window and make a hundred people very happy."

The pilot rolls his eyes and says to his co-pilot, "Such arrogant asses
back there. Hell, I could throw the three of them out the window and make 56 million people really happy."

(*) (*) (y) (y) (y) :) :) :)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-25-2006, 06:43 PM

The River

Three men were hiking through a forest when they came upon a large, raging violent river. Needing to get on the other side, the first man prayed,

"God, please give me the strength to cross the river." Poof! God gave him big arms and strong legs and he was able to swim across in about 2 hours, having almost drowned twice.

After witnessing that, the second man prayed, "God, please give me strength and the tools to cross the river." Poof! God gave him a rowboat and strong arms and strong legs and he was able to row across in about an hour after almost capsizing once.

Seeing what happened to the first two men, the third man prayed, "God, please give me the strength, the tools and the intelligence to cross the river." Poof!! He was turned into a woman. She checked the map, hiked one hundred yards up stream and walked across the bridge.

(*) (*) I LOVED this one! ;) :)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-25-2006, 06:44 PM

http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2006/04/01/

:D :D

Sweetlady

sweetlady

05-25-2006, 06:47 PM

Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself, "Lillian, you
should have remained a virgin."
-- Lillian Carter (mother of Jimmy Carter)

I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not
pleased to read the description in the catalog: "No good in a bed, but
fine against a wall." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I
have since been visited by her sister, and now wish to withdraw that
statement. -- Mark Twain

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending,
and to have the two as close together as possible. -- George Burns

Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year. -- Victor
Borge

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. -- Mark
Twain

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you
get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. -- Socrates

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. -- Groucho Marx

My wife has a slight impediment in her speech. Every now and then she
stops to breathe. -- Jimmy Durante

I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back. -- Zsa Zsa Gabor

Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food
groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat. -- Alex Levine

My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery, people would stop dying. --
Rodney Dangerfield

Money can't buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form
of misery. -- Spike Milligan

I am opposed to millionaires... but it would be dangerous to offer me the
position. -- Mark Twain

Until I was thirteen, I thought my name was SHUT UP. -- Joe Namath

I don't feel old. I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my
nap. -- Bob Hope

I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.
-- W.C. Fields

We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way
through Congress. -- Will Rogers

Don't worry about avoiding temptation; as you grow older, it will avoid
you. -- Winston Churchill

Maybe it's true that life begins at fifty ... but everything else starts
to wear out, fall out, or spread out. -- Phyllis Diller

By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he's too old to go
anywhere. -- Billy Crystal

The cardiologist's diet: If it tastes good, spit it out.

(*) (y) (y) (y) :) :) :)

;) ;)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-25-2006, 06:50 PM

Connecting With Barbaro: Send a Greeting, Make a Donation
by Blood-Horse Staff

Date Posted: 5/23/2006 1:11:47 PM
Last Updated: 5/24/2006 7:53:36 AM

Below are selected links to some Web sites that have been established related to Barbaro:

To send an e-mail to Barbaro at New Bolton Center:
E-Mail to Barbaro at New Bolton Center: http://www.vet.upenn.edu/

To send an e-mail to Barbaro through the National Thoroughbred Racing Association:
E-Mail to Barbaro via NTRA: http://www.ntra.com/content.aspx?type=other&id=17992

To make a contribution to the Barbaro Fund: http://www.vet.upenn.edu/giving/giving_ways.html

To send an e-mail to trainer Michael Matz and/or owners Roy and Gretchen Jackson:
United States Equestrian Federation: http://www.usef.org/ You can send your message to Barbaro, Trainer Michael Matz, a three-time Olympic equestrian who won Silver at the Atlanta Games in 1996, and the owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, by emailing matzbarbaro@usef.org. The USEF will compile these messages into a special notebook and forward it to Barbaro and his connections.

To send an e-mail to Barbaro at fan-based Web site:

Getwellbarbaro.com: http://www.getwellbarbaro.com/

(l) (l) My thoughts and prayers are with this spectacular animal and his human "family". It amazes me that so many people are interested and sending good thoughts and prayers.(l)

({) (}) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-25-2006, 06:52 PM

http://www.inc.com/slideshow_INC/slideviewer.cgi?list=groundbreakers&dir=&config=&refresh=8&direction=forward&cycle=on&scale=0&design=default&total=11

:) I'm not sure that I agree with all ten and don't know what the criteria was. I was surprised at the one politician though.:o

(f) (f) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

05-25-2006, 06:54 PM

May 23, 2006

From the 'Dog Whisperer,' a Howl of Triumph

By EDWARD WYATT NYTimes

In his journey from illegal immigrant to television star, Cesar Millan, a best-selling author and dog trainer to the Hollywood elite better known as television's "Dog Whisperer," has not forgotten the little people who helped him along the way.

They are thanked, right up front, in "Cesar's Way," his guide to understanding and correcting common dog problems: Jada Pinkett Smith, Oprah Winfrey, Anthony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Phil McGraw.

Also, "the women who ran a grooming parlor in San Diego and who hired me when I first came to the United States. Forgive me for not recalling your names."

It is an unusual example of Mr. Millan's forgetfulness, explainable perhaps by understanding that the Dog Whisperer rarely looks back. In his dog-training methodology, in his business and elsewhere, he is the pack leader.

Evidence of the primacy of Mr. Millan in all his efforts comes with today's release of the DVD collection "Dog Whisperer With Cesar Millan: The Complete First Season." Though "Dog Whisperer" is the top-rated show on the National Geographic Channel, National Geographic's name and familiar logo are nowhere on the DVD's front cover.

Instead, Cesar Millan is the brand.

"This is not a flash-in-the-pan sort of thing," said Jim Milio, one of the three founders of MPH Entertainment, which produces Mr. Millan's show along with Emery/Sumner Productions, and who has helped to guide Mr. Millan's efforts to build an ambitious business enterprise. "This is not one year and he's gone. We're making him into a long-lasting brand," with more books and videos and dog-training aids and, well, who knows?

It was thanks to the efforts of his producers, for example, that Mr. Millan kept all the home video and foreign syndication rights to his television show. That has allowed him to create, in addition to the 10-hour complete collections, which retails for nearly $50, several shorter collections that will be widely available for less than $10 each. Wal-Mart and Sam's Club are expected to feature them at the front of their stores.

Mr. Millan's fame has grown to the point where he was recently parodied on an episode of "South Park," the Comedy Central staple.

To hear Mr. Millan tell it, he planned it all exactly this way. Even as he evaded border patrols while following a paid guide from Tijuana into Southern California, he said recently, "my goal was just to become the best dog trainer in the world." Now a legal immigrant, he is married to an American citizen and planning to apply for citizenship himself.

"And my goal was always Hollywood," he added. "Where I'm from, the only thing you hear is Hollywood and Disneyland. You don't hear Texas, you don't hear Ohio, you don't even hear New York. My target was Hollywood because that was the only thing I knew."

Mr. Millan, 36, started by working in the early 1990's in a San Diego dog-grooming studio, where he gained a reputation for working well with the hard-to-handle cases. He asked neighbors to let him walk their dogs. People noticed how he could calm even the fiercest creatures, and word of mouth, the most effective form of advertising and promotion, followed him north to Los Angeles.

Working with Americans and their dogs, he said, "I was surprised and a little confused by what I saw." Where he grew up, in Culiacan, Sinaloa, in Northwest Mexico, "everybody walks dogs," Mr. Millan said during a recent visit to New York. "But where I am from, the dog is always behind. Here the dog is always in front. I thought maybe you guys were doing it right and we were doing it wrong. Because to me America is the country where everybody is always doing it right. I thought you knew and we were wrong."

He quickly discovered: no. Americans were letting the dogs, rather than the humans, be the pack leaders, in almost every respect. "Americans work against Mother Nature, and that's why dogs don't listen to the general population of America," he said. "Why are dogs growing up on a farm much happier than a dog living in the city? Because on a farm, it gets to be a dog. And in the city they become a child, they become a husband, they become a soul mate. They become something the human wants before they are willing to do what is best for them."

That, in turn, translates to dogs behaving badly. At Mr. Millan's Dog Psychology Center in Los Angeles, he works with dozens of dogs at a time. He first drew attention for his walks through Los Angeles with his packs — he on in-line skates, the dogs on leashes — or his runs along the beach or through the Santa Monica Mountains with them. Always, Mr. Millan is at the head of the pack.

"It's like cowboys," he said. "They grow up around the horse and the cow; they are not afraid of them. You can be a huge dog lover, you can have a passion for it, but that doesn't mean you can develop the strong assertive state of mind that is required to be around hard-core cases. These cases I work with, they are coming after me. But I don't develop fear. Like the people who work around cobras — they don't have fear in their mind. What makes you become a pack leader is being in a calm, assertive state 100 percent of the time."

Whether he can remain calm and assertive in the wake of his fame and growing fortune will be interesting to watch; in addition to those, Mr. Millan is starting to draw the scrutiny that in America inevitably follows — that is, lawsuits. Earlier this year, Flody Suarez, a television producer and former NBC executive, filed suit in state court charging that his dog, Gator, was severely injured and abused at the Dog Psychology Center. A former publicist for Mr. Millan, Makeda Smith, and a partner also sued Mr. Millan and the National Geographic Channel, contending that they helped to create the idea for a "Dog Whisperer" television series.

Mr. Millan would not comment on the lawsuits. In a statement, a spokesman for the National Geographic Channel also declined to comment on the litigation, adding that the Suarez dog's injuries were not related to the production of the show and that Mr. Millan was not at the center when the dog was there.

Still, Mr. Millan is hard to ruffle, something he says is essential to his training methods.

"It's a ripple effect," he said. "I believe in the golden rule — do good things and good things will happen to you. I know I help dogs all the time. And because you help Mother Nature, Mother Nature is going to help you back. There's no other way around. It's the law of the universe."

(y) :) :) :) :) (y)

(l) (&) (l) (&) (l) (&) (l) (&) (l)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

Lady_Di

05-25-2006, 07:09 PM

....

If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.
If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it.
He sends you flowers every spring.
He sends you a sunrise every morning

Face it, friend - He is crazy about you!

Send this to every "beautiful person" you wish to bless.

God didn't promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow,sun without
rain, but He did promise strength for the day, comfort for the tears, and
light for the way. Read this line very slowly and let it sink in... If God
brings you to it, He will bring you through it.

(S) (S) Have a lovely weekend!!

Love, peace and hugs,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

Greetings Sweetlady,

Hope you are doing well. I miss hearing from you. Back in school here. Working once again, back in that proverbial saddle as we like to say. And you know how we love those saddles, I know you do as well. Did you get on any of those cruises? Did you finish any of those classes?

Anyhows... Give that beautiful pup a big ole kiss from me, okay?

I love boxer kisses, miss the hell outta of them, actually...

Sorry I have been so remiss and neglectful, Sweeetlady, life has been surreal, as per usual and the like

***giving Wyatt a big box of pig's ear and a case of Milk Bones, cause I betcha he still is a might Orally fixated....***

From the Wild Wild West,
d'who loves a bone to chew on herself...

sweetlady

06-01-2006, 09:42 PM

Greetings Sweetlady,

Hope you are doing well. I miss hearing from you. Back in school here. Working once again, back in that proverbial saddle as we like to say. And you know how we love those saddles, I know you do as well. Did you get on any of those cruises? Did you finish any of those classes?

Anyhows... Give that beautiful pup a big ole kiss from me, okay?

I love boxer kisses, miss the hell outta of them, actually...

Sorry I have been so remiss and neglectful, Sweeetlady, life has been surreal, as per usual and the like

***giving Wyatt a big box of pig's ear and a case of Milk Bones, cause I betcha he still is a might Orally fixated....***

From the Wild Wild West,
d'who loves a bone to chew on herself...

It was really nice to read your posting and learn that you are doing well. I also appreciated yout thoughtful greetings and virtual treats for Wyatt.(f) (f) Thanks so much!

I have done some traveling..no boats though...;) More like trips to check places out in terms of moving. Definitely this year and probably within the next couple of months.

I always finish my graduate courses....:) ..actually I have three left to take before starting Comps and my dissertation Jan., 2007. Still at a 4.0 GPA and feeling grateful about that too. I should have my doctorate by next Fall.

Thanks again for your post. As always, it is nice to "see" you....:)

KIndest Regards,
Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-01-2006, 09:47 PM

Americans pride themselves on being doers rather than thinkers. Ideas are naturally suspect to such a people. But ideas are at the root of what it means to be American, and today’s habits of thought practiced by citizens throughout the United States are the lineal descendants of a powerful body of ideas that traces back to the first European settlers and that was enriched by later generations of American thinkers.

Behind this nation’s diverse views on religion, education, social equality, democracy, and other vital issues is a long-running intellectual debate about the right ordering of the human, natural, and divine worlds.

In their own times such great thinkers as Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, William James, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others engaged in lively and often contentious debate that helped mold America’s institutions and attitudes. Their approach was frequently honed by ideas from abroad—from Locke, Hume, Kant, Darwin, Marx, Freud, and Gandhi, among others.

This immensely stimulating conversation that made the U.S. what it is today is the subject of The American Mind, a series of 36 lectures that offers you a broad survey of American intellectual history.

Politics, Religion, Education, Philosophy

In this course you will delve deeply into the philosophical underpinnings of the nation, forged by the Puritans and the leaders of the American Revolution. You will also explore many other aspects of the elaborate structure that became modern America, tracing ideas in politics, religion, education, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, literature, social theory, and science—proving that Americans have a much richer intellectual tradition than generally imagined.

Your teacher is the distinguished historian Allen C. Guelzo, an unprecedented two-time winner of both the Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize for his successive books on Abraham Lincoln, one of America’s most underrated but influential intellectuals.

The Washington Post noted themes in Professor Guelzo’s work that are especially relevant to this course: "In his book on Lincoln as a man of ideas, Guelzo argues that Americans have failed to recognize what an intellectually vibrant country this was in the first half of the 19th century."

America: A Hotbed of Ideas

As it was in Lincoln’s day, so it has been throughout U.S. history: America is an enduring hotbed of ideas. For example:

# The Transcendentalists: In 1834, Ralph Waldo Emerson moved to Concord, Massachusetts, where he began work on the brief book that would become his manifesto, Nature. With its publication, Kantian epistemology and romantic sensibility arrived in America with a bang. Emerson’s later lecture entitled “The Transcendentalist” provided a name for this influential new movement.

# Pragmatism: William James codified a characteristically American philosophy in his book Pragmatism: A New Name For Some Old Ways of Thinking. The term came from Kant, and the concept grew out of a short-lived philosophical club that James had attended in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the early 1870s. The club included Chauncey Wright, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and a bafflingly eccentric mathematician-turned-philosopher named Charles Sanders Peirce.

# Conservatism: The origin of a distinctively American brand of conservatism is linked to the arrival of émigré European intellectuals after World War II. These thinkers found allies among former American communists, who had turned away from socialism; traditionalist Roman Catholics; and Southern agrarians.

An Entirely Different Map of the American Mind

Professor Guelzo’s goal in this course is to lay out an entirely different map of the American mind from that taught in traditional presentations of American intellectual history. The usual approach underrates the Puritan contributions, marginalizes 18th-century theologian Jonathan Edwards, embellishes the influence of Benjamin Franklin, oversimplifies pragmatism, and slights the rich contributions of a wide range of 20th-century thinkers.

In these 36 lectures, Dr. Guelzo remedies these shortcomings by covering the large stretches of intellectual territory that are ignored in the traditional survey. You begin with the Puritans, exploring their participation in a larger, transatlantic realm of philosophical work. Next you study Jonathan Edwards as the creative fusion of two seemingly opposed trends: the spiritual revival of the Great Awakening and the passion for reason sparked by the Enlightenment.

After examining the intellectual currents underlying the American Revolution, you focus on the backlash against Enlightenment values that spawned American Romanticism. Then you study the surprising diversity of American pragmatism and discover that it cannot account for such 20th-century intellectual developments as the Old Left, the New Left, and Neo-Conservatism.

Throughout the course, Dr. Guelzo stresses the persistence of six fundamental themes that developed as the nation matured. These are at the center of our lives today and will doubtless be the principal preoccupations of American minds for a long time to come:

# Intellect versus will: From the Puritans to Lincoln to the behaviorist B. F. Skinner, no question has shown up more often in American culture than the struggle between intellect and will—whether it is more important to think or to act.

# The persistence of religion: Religious ideas have defied every prediction of their demise and have remained a living part of American intellectual life.

# Religion versus the Enlightenment: From the colonial era until today, religion and the Enlightenment have formed the two souls of the American consciousness.

# The power of liberal capitalism: American history has been marked by the struggle between liberty and power; a contest exemplified by the liberal capitalism of Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln matched against the agrarian populism of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.

# Pragmatism: In the post-Civil War decades, American thinking made a dramatic shift away from traditional philosophical and social thinking toward pragmatism and secularism.

# The rise to world power: America’s ascent to world power through two world wars has created entirely new dilemmas and responsibilities for the nation and its thinkers.

An Intellectual Feast

One of the fascinating aspects of this course is that you trace the origin and evolution of America’s colleges, which have served as a battleground of ideas, sometimes in an almost literal sense. In 1732, a leader of the Great Awakening held a bonfire of doctrinally suspect books at Yale College, expressing the hope that "the Authors of those Books, those of them that are dead, are roasting in the Flames of Hell…."

Many of the adherents of the Great Awakening turned their backs on America’s venerable Puritan colleges, Harvard and Yale, to found alternative institutions such as Princeton, Rhode Island College (which became Brown), Queen’s College (which became Rutgers), and Dartmouth. Two others, the future University of Pennsylvania and Columbia College, also bore the imprint of the Awakening.

A century later, higher education’s religious calling was all but forgotten as American colleges embraced the secular mission of providing human capital to industry in the aftermath of the Civil War. And in the 1950s and ’60s, the pendulum swung back to a more communal orientation under the influence of the radical New Left.

You will also learn about books that left their stamp on American intellectual life, such as Jonathan Edwards’s Freedom of the Will in the 1700s, Frances Wayland’s Elements of Political Economy and William James’s Principles of Psychology in the 1800s, W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk and Henry Adams’s The Education of Henry Adams in the early 20th century, along with works by Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, B. F. Skinner, Reinhold Niebuhr, Leo Strauss, and others in more recent times.

Professor Guelzo has laid out an intellectual feast made up almost entirely of homegrown American ingredients, with a dash of inspiration from abroad. You will find an abundance of food for thought, and after the first helping, you will definitely be back for more.

http://theteachingcompany.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/4880.asp?id=4880&d=American+Mind&pc=Philosophy%20and%20Intellectual%20History

:) :) Definitely an intellectual feast......;) (h) (i) (h)

Carpe Diem,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-01-2006, 09:50 PM

1. http://theteachingcompany.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/687.asp?id=687&d=Buddhism&pc=Religion

2. http://theteachingcompany.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/350.asp?id=350&d=History+of+Ancient+Egypt&pc=Search

3. This one's description alone really filled in many gaps for me:

http://theteachingcompany.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/8593.asp?id=8593&d=United+States+and+the+Middle+East%3A+1914+to+9%2 F11&pc=SaleHistory%20-%20Modern

4. This one amazed me as well, especially the sense of hope that provides as the course concludes:

"Unlike the story of totalitarianism, which is about the state, the story of resistance is one of individuals who ignored personal risk in order to oppose violence. These "witnesses to the century," as Professor Liulevicius calls them, include novelists George Orwell and Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Polish labor leader Lech Walesa, Pope John Paul II, and political philosopher Hannah Arendt.

Their examples offer a hopeful conclusion."

http://theteachingcompany.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/8313.asp?id=8313&d=Utopia+and+Terror+in+the+20th+Century&pc=SaleHistory%20-%20Modern

5. I have always wanted to understand better classical music in terms of historical context and events impacting the composers.

http://theteachingcompany.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/710.asp?id=710&d=Concert+Masterworks&pc=Fine%20Arts%20and%20Music

and

(since I have attended a number of them in the past):

http://theteachingcompany.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/7210.asp?id=7210&d=The+Symphony&pc=Fine%20Arts%20and%20Music

Enjoy!!

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the awake-since-there's-huge thunderstorms-right-now :| (&) :|

P.S. Actually he and I both jump at the "close ones" but he doesn't seem to be frightened like Doc Holliday was.

sweetlady

06-01-2006, 09:52 PM

May 21, 2006

F. Y. I.

Stonehenge in the City

By MICHAEL POLLAK

Q. I've heard about a "Manhattan solstice," when the sun supposedly lines up along the streets. Is it for real? When does it happen?

A. Here's the lowdown on the sundown, courtesy of Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. On May 28 and on July 13, the sun will fully illuminate every Manhattan cross street (not the curved or angled ones) on the street grid during the last 15 minutes of daylight, and it will set on each street's center line. The sight is breathtaking.

This is a special photo opportunity, with parts of Manhattan's canyons getting illumination they normally don't get.

If the Manhattan street grid ran north-south and east-west, the alignment days would be the spring and fall equinoxes, the two days when the sun rises due east and sets due west. But the Manhattan grid is angled 30 degrees east from geographic north, shifting the days.

There are two corresponding mornings of sunrise right on the center lines of the Manhattan grid, Dr. Tyson wrote in an e-mail message: Dec. 5, 2006, and Jan. 8, 2007.

Those four solstice days will shift no more than a day over four years as a result of leap days, Dr. Tyson wrote. But the shift is so small that if you went out only on these dates, you would see the effect just fine. "In fact the effect is good for a day on either side of the advertised days, typically offering a range of weather choices for the avid viewer," he wrote.

As for the sunset next Sunday and on July 13, Dr. Tyson wrote, the sun will line up on the center lines just as its falls halfway below the horizon. The official sunset, when "the sun's last smidgen sets below the horizon," lines up on slightly different days, but this one makes for a nicer photo.

:) :) :) :) Great idea!(i)

SL & WTBP (S) (&) (S)

sweetlady

06-01-2006, 09:54 PM

May 28, 2006

Media Frenzy

From a Small Stream, a Gusher of Movie Facts

By RICHARD SIKLOS

BRISTOL, England

THE closest that Col Needham gets to corporate life is the Dilbert calendar in his neat office — a converted bedroom in a quaint house in the ancient village of Stoke Gifford, a suburb of Bristol, the harbor city that is 90 minutes west of London by train.

As the founder and managing director of the Internet Movie Database, Mr. Needham might just be the archetype of the telecommuting Web-head. The site he founded and runs, www.imdb.com, ranks as the 10th-most-popular entertainment spot online, according to ComScore Media Metrix. It had 18.6 million unique visitors in April, a 67 percent surge from a year earlier.

In Stoke Gifford, Mr. Needham works solo — without even an assistant — but is in constant contact by instant message with other employees scattered across the globe and at the Seattle headquarters of Amazon.com, which acquired the business eight years ago. "Everybody assumes that we have a massive office complex on Wilshire Boulevard," Mr. Needham said with a grin. "I always say, 'We're headquartered on the Internet.' "

Mr. Needham, a boyish, closely-shorn 39-year-old walked to the kitchen, put on the kettle and made tea. Part of what makes him a curiosity — beyond his enviable work setup — is that Internet Movie Database, or Imdb for short, has become a classic example of a hobby that turns out to be a powerful media asset. For years, it has quietly gone about its business almost entirely separately from its parent, and only subtly does it encourage users to go to the Amazon site to buy videos.

"We didn't sit down and think, 'What's the best way to make money on the Internet?' " Mr. Needham said. "This is very much a labor of love. When we started the company, there was no commercial use of the Internet."

Even so, Imdb's convergence moment may soon be at hand, say studio executives who have worked with Amazon on developing a download service that could let people burn DVD's on their desktops. Though Amazon and Mr. Needham decline to talk about plans, Imdb could play a more prominent role in the retailer's media strategy. Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers are all involved in the project, executives close to the project have said.

Several weeks ago, one media executive who had been briefed on Amazon's strategy but did not want to be identified because it was still being formulated, pointed out one aspect of Imdb's popularity: if you use search engines to look for the title of virtually any past movie or television show, or the names of celebrities from those realms, Imdb often comes up as the first result.

In the retail business, that is the equivalent of excellent shelf frontage, or, in television, of having a single-digit channel number rather than being relegated to Channel 284 on the cable lineup.

There are glimpses of a grander media plan beyond Imdb. For instance, Amazon has quietly built up its own www.a9.com search engine, which places more emphasis on displaying results in multiple media formats than bigger rivals like Google and Yahoo. But even if Amazon's foray into downloading fizzles, Imdb holds its own. Its climb also provides some interesting lessons for burgeoning digital media barons.

Internet Movie Database began in 1990 as a bulletin board database of movie credits. It was started by Mr. Needham and some film-buff friends. At the time, Mr. Needham was working as an engineer in Bristol at Hewlett-Packard (or, as he says in his native Manchester lilt, "Hewlett Pa-Cod") and had only a rudimentary strategy for financing the site.

By 1998, the database had established itself as a favorite on the early Internet, and Mr. Needham was amused to receive a number of buyout approaches.

One was an invitation to a London hotel in January to meet with Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Mr. Bezos told Mr. Needham that he thought the movie database could help Amazon sell VHS cassettes and DVD's — Mr. Needham points out that it was in that order in those days — but also recognized that the site would need to be run separately to maintain its personality. Amazon, of course, could handle the technological end and pour resources into upgrades.

Today, Imdb makes money a variety of ways: from advertising, selling publicity photos, licensing its content, selling movie tickets through partners and offering a premium Imdb Pro service (started in 2002). For $99 a year, Imdb Pro subscribers get granular access to all kinds of industry data, like movie budgets and details about films in production. By chronicling everyone who ever worked on a film, the service has become a de facto directory of most everyone from key grips to producers, actors and directors.

Its most clever feature is probably the Starmeter and Movimeter ratings, which gauge the popularity of people and films, based on search topics. To no one's surprise, Audrey Tautou was No. 1 last week on the Starmeter, up from No. 215 early last year, when she joined the cast of "The Da Vinci Code."

Like the social networking sites that are now so popular in media, Imdb has found that much of its success is built on the participation of site visitors. Last year, Mr. Needham said, its users submitted information to the database 16 million times, adding minutiae like what commercials Hollywood actors have performed in abroad, or what video games they have done voice-overs for.

When its users are not adding information, they are perusing — or debating and challenging — material related to the 787,000 film, television and video game titles detailed on the site. One can learn, for example, that while Jennifer Grey played Jeanie in the film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (1986), Jennifer Aniston played Jeanie in the TV series "Ferris Bueller" (1990).

Those submissions are then monitored — vetted is too strong a word — by a team of editors who take their entertainment geekdom seriously. Any factual mistakes they may not find on their own are usually brought to their attention by users, who also make frequent accusations that some Hollywood wannabes who submit their biographies to the site are padding their résumés.

In Mr. Needham's office, the only visible connection to Amazon is a separate laptop that has a secure feed to the company's internal server in Seattle. On the wall is a gift from Mr. Bezos: a framed original poster of "Vertigo," Mr. Needham's favorite film.

While Mr. Needham is thrilled to talk about the business, he is reticent about giving too many details. He does say that the company is profitable, that there are more than 50 employees and that they are in the United States, Britain, Switzerland and Germany. At Imdb, he says repeatedly that "the customer is the celebrity," and that the company is not.

AS for his own fortunes, a clue is found in the original announcement of Imdb's acquisition in April 1998. It said Imdb and two separate European businesses were bought mostly for Amazon shares then worth close to $55 million. Though it is impossible to know how the shares were divided among the three companies, the shares would be worth roughly $213 million now.

For his part, Mr. Needham dresses like a regular guy, and he drives a Toyota to take me to the train station. But it does turn out that the house in Stoke Gifford is actually just his former home; it now serves only as offices for him and his wife, although it retains all the furnishings, including his daughters' bunk beds.

The Needhams live in what he calls their "dream house" about 15 minutes away. It is there that Mr. Needham keeps his prized possession: an ever-growing collection of 7,500 films, mostly DVD's.

Asked whether someday it would all be digital, with his collection floating on a hard drive, Mr. Needham thought not: "I like to kick the tires of things I own."

(~) (~) (y) (y)

(o)

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-01-2006, 09:59 PM

http://www.toyvault.com/montypython/

:o :| :)

;)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-01-2006, 10:00 PM

More Veterinarians Making House Calls

By CARRIE ANTLFINGER

GLENDALE, Wis. (AP) - Fourteen-year-old Murphy hisses and growls as Dr. Barb Rossi tries to draw blood from her leg to find out if the cat's kidney failure has progressed.

Rossi has put a muzzle on her and owner Peggy Vanco is holding her on a bed in her Glendale home. Vanco also has two other cats and a springer spaniel that got checkups.

``It's just much more convenient for me and I think the animals react better to have her come rather than going to a vet's office, especially the cats,'' Vanco said.

Rossi is part of a growing number of veterinarians who make house calls because of the low overhead costs and the freedom that comes with it.

``For older people, for people with disabilities, for animals that hate to go in, it's really nice and it helps me to see animals in their own environment,'' Rossi said.

Shannon Stanek, president of the 30-year-old American Association of House Calls and Mobile Veterinarians, said the profession is experiencing a revival: Membership has doubled to about 300 members over the last 10 years. She also has received more inquiries lately.

She estimated about 70 percent of her members work out of their cars and the rest have mobile units - recreational vehicles where they perform surgeries, dental exams and X-rays. Two companies that make the mobile units are also seeing an increase in demand.

Stanek, who is based in Pottstown, Pa., estimated that about 5,000 vets make house calls nationwide in both rural areas and big cities.

Stanek, 36, has visited homes for about nine years within about 20 miles of her home.

Her business has grown 15 percent to 20 percent each year and she is looking to add an office to her practice in case her clients need emergency services or medications.

Dr. Michael Andrews, president of the American Animal Hospital Association, said people think more highly of their pets than 15 or 20 years ago.

``We've shifted away from a more agricultural and rural background and that's playing a role,'' said Andrews, who is based in Riverside, Calif.

People are also more willing to spend money on their pets, he said. What mobile vets charge varies - some charge more and others like Rossi charge less than an area clinic.

According to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, the amount pet owners spent more than doubled from $17 billion in 1994 to $36.3 billion in 2005 - an all-time high.

Spending on veterinarians has also increased from 7.1 billion in 2001 to 8.7 billion in 2005, according to the association.

The companies that make the mobile vet units, which cost $130,000 to $200,000 on average, have also seen demand increase.

Dennis Day, a vice president at Humboldt, Iowa-based Dodgen Industries Inc., said last year sales increased 12 percent and he's projecting a 6 percent increase this year.

Gahanna, Ohio-based La Boit has seen sales jump by an average of 30 percent each year for the last five years, said Vice President Jody Blais.

Dr. Lindsey Heard, who is based in Macon, Ga., had his own pet hospital for 15 years until 2002 when he got a La Boit mobile unit. Heard, 54, said he likes that he can set his own schedule and nets more money than before.

He said he tries to stay within a 10- to 15-mile radius, and his top services are spays, neuters, vaccinations and exams.

``I can do pretty much anything else anyone else can do in a practice except board,'' he said. ``I love it. I never would go back.''

Heard, who normally has an employee but currently does not, said he keeps his rates reasonable because he has little overhead costs. He charges $40 for travel and an exam, and everything else is extra - about what he charged at his clinic. His average bill is $175 to $200. He said that is inexpensive compared to other parts of the country.

He recently added a $5 fuel surcharge because of rising gas prices. His mobile unit only gets 5 to 6 miles a gallon, he said.

He said one downside is he doesn't have an organized retirement plan and if his mobile unit has a problem, he can be out of commission for days.

Rossi, 51, on the other hand, works mostly out of her car, hauling a suitcase of supplies and a bag with a scale into each home. She even keeps a centrifuge - which spins the blood to ready it for the lab - on her front passenger car floor.

A lab picks up the blood for tests at her house twice a day and she does other routine lab work in her basement.

She charges $55 for an exam, vaccination and travel. She mostly sees dogs and cats within 50 miles of her Fox Point, Wis., home, but works out of a clinic on Fridays for surgeries, which average $150 to $450.

Rossi worked for a clinic for 13 years before deciding to become self-employed as a house-call veterinarian five years ago.

She now earns more than ever and her business has grown about 15 percent each year, Rossi said.

``Most of the time I didn't really need the facilities of the clinic,'' she said. ``It was mostly me using my skill with people to solve the problems.''

Rossi, whose business has come from word of mouth, said meeting pets in their environment also helps her recommend treatment. She said she once saw an arthritic older dog that slipped on wooden floors. She recommended the owner get sturdy rugs to help the dog get around, which likely wouldn't have been considered if the pet had visited a clinic.

Rossi said she has done some cat neuters at homes and many euthanasias. She said she takes the euthanized animals to a pet cemetery.

She said a downside to the job is getting blood from cats. She has taught people how to hold a cat so it doesn't get away, but if she or the person gets hurt, she just ``aborts the mission,'' she said.

``For the most part, they are much better at home,'' Rossi said.

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?idq=/ff/story/0001/20060517/1928277215.htm

(l) (&) (l) (&) (l) (l)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (S) (&) (S)

sweetlady

06-01-2006, 10:05 PM

New material makes invisibility possible: studies

www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-29 14:55:20

BEIJING, May 29 (Xinhuanet) -- New studies suggest that science-fiction portrayals of invisibility, such as Harry Potter's cloak, might be truly possible.

nspiring the new research is a type of material known as "metamaterial." Metamaterials have special properties because they are built with internal structures small enough to interact with light or other radiation. This allows scientists to build devices that can do things, such as bending light, in unique ways.

Two separate teams of researchers have come up with theories on ways to use experimental metamaterials to cloak an object and hide it from visible light, infrared light, microwaves and perhaps even sonar probes.

"Imagine a situation where a medium guides light around a hole in it," Ulf Leonhardt, a physicist of Britain's University of St. Andrews, reported in the journal Science.

The light rays end up behind the object as if they had traveled in a straight line.

"Any object placed in the hole would be hidden from sight. The medium would create the ultimate optical illusion: invisibility," Leonhardt wrote. "Such devices may be possible. The method developed here can be also applied to escape detection by other electromagnetic waves or sound."

In this new theory, which is from that used on modern "stealth" bombers, which bounce radar off their surfaces so they cannot be seen, an object would be encased in a shell of metamaterials and they would create an illusion akin to a mirage, said David Schurig of Duke University in North Carolina, who worked on a second report, which also appears in the latest Science journal.

"Think of space as a woven cloth," Schurig said. "Imagine making a hole in the cloth by inserting a pointed object between the threads without tearing them."

The light, or microwaves, or radar would travel along the threads of the cloth, ending up behind the object without having touched it.

"You just need the right set of material properties and you can guide light," Schurig said.

But anyone making such a cloak would have to choose what form of radiation one wanted invisibility from, Schurig said. The invisibility would work both ways - a person hidden from the visible light spectrum would have to use infrared or sonar or microwaves to see out, he said. Enditem

(Agencies) Editor: Nie Peng

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-05/29/content_4616581.htm

(*) (*) .....(i) (h) (i) (h) (i) Would I love having a long hooded cape.....;) Come to think of it, I'm way to busy to be invisible......but the idea of how light can bend sure was intriguing!

(S) (S) 's

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-01-2006, 10:08 PM

May 28, 2006

Editorial Observer

Why the Democratic Ethic of the World Wide Web May Be About to End

By ADAM COHEN NYTimes

The World Wide Web is the most democratic mass medium there has ever been. Freedom of the press, as the saying goes, belongs only to those who own one. Radio and television are controlled by those rich enough to buy a broadcast license. But anyone with an Internet-connected computer can reach out to a potential audience of billions.

This democratic Web did not just happen. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist who invented the Web in 1989, envisioned a platform on which everyone in the world could communicate on an equal basis. But his vision is being threatened by telecommunications and cable companies, and other Internet service providers, that want to impose a new system of fees that could create a hierarchy of Web sites. Major corporate sites would be able to pay the new fees, while little-guy sites could be shut out.

Sir Tim, who keeps a low profile, has begun speaking out in favor of "net neutrality," rules requiring that all Web sites remain equal on the Web. Corporations that stand to make billions if they can push tiered pricing through have put together a slick lobbying and marketing campaign. But Sir Tim and other supporters of net neutrality are inspiring growing support from Internet users across the political spectrum who are demanding that Congress preserve the Web in its current form.

The Web, which Sir Tim invented as a scientist at CERN, the European nuclear physics institute, is often confused with the Internet. But like e-mail, the Web runs over the system of interconnected computer networks known as the Internet. Sir Tim created the Web in a decentralized way that allowed anyone with a computer to connect to it and begin receiving and sending information.

That open architecture is what has allowed for the extraordinary growth of Internet commerce and communication. Pierre Omidyar, a small-time programmer working out of his home office, was able to set up an online auction site that anyone in the world could reach — which became eBay. The blogging phenomenon is possible because individuals can create Web sites with the World Wide Web prefix, www, that can be seen by anyone with Internet access.

Last year, the chief executive of what is now AT&T sent shock waves through cyberspace when he asked why Web sites should be able to "use my pipes free." Internet service providers would like to be able to charge Web sites for access to their customers. Web sites that could not pay the new fees would be accessible at a slower speed, or perhaps not be accessible at all.

A tiered Internet poses a threat at many levels. Service providers could, for example, shut out Web sites whose politics they dislike. Even if they did not discriminate on the basis of content, access fees would automatically marginalize smaller, poorer Web sites.

Consider online video, which depends on the availability of higher-speed connections. Internet users can now watch channels, like BBC World, that are not available on their own cable systems, and they have access to video blogs and Web sites like YouTube.com, where people upload videos of their own creation. Under tiered pricing, Internet users might be able to get videos only from major corporate channels.

Sir Tim expects that there are great Internet innovations yet to come, many involving video. He believes people at the scene of an accident — or a political protest — will one day be able to take pictures with their cellphones that could be pieced together to create a three-dimensional image of what happened. That sort of innovation could be blocked by fees for the high-speed connections required to relay video images.

The companies fighting net neutrality have been waging a misleading campaign, with the slogan "hands off the Internet," that tries to look like a grass-roots effort to protect the Internet in its current form. What they actually favor is stopping the government from protecting the Internet, so they can get their own hands on it.

But the other side of the debate has some large corporate backers, too, like Google and Microsoft, which could be hit by access fees since they depend on the Internet service providers to put their sites on the Web. It also has support from political groups of all persuasions. The president of the Christian Coalition, which is allied with Moveon.org on this issue, recently asked, "What if a cable company with a pro-choice board of directors decides that it doesn't like a pro-life organization using its high-speed network to encourage pro-life activities?"

Forces favoring a no-fee Web have been gaining strength. One group, Savetheinternet.com, says it has collected more than 700,000 signatures on a petition. Last week, a bipartisan bill favoring net neutrality, sponsored by James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, and John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, won a surprisingly lopsided vote in the House Judiciary Committee.

Sir Tim argues that service providers may be hurting themselves by pushing for tiered pricing. The Internet's extraordinary growth has been fueled by the limitless vistas the Web offers surfers, bloggers and downloaders. Customers who are used to the robust, democratic Web may not pay for one that is restricted to wealthy corporate content providers.

"That's not what we call Internet at all," says Sir Tim. "That's what we call cable TV."

(*) (*) (*) The last line sums it all up...and so succinctly too.....(y)

(o) .....off to read in-between thunderstorms.....Wyatt is fast asleep.

(k) (k) 's

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-01-2006, 10:10 PM

May 25, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Laid Off and Left Out

By BOB HERBERT

You don't hear much from the American worker anymore. Like battered soldiers at the end of a lost war, ordinary workers seem resigned to their diminished status.

The grim terms imposed on them include wage stagnation, the widespread confiscation of benefits (including pensions they once believed were guaranteed), and a permanent state of employment insecurity.

For an unnecessarily large number of Americans, the workplace has become a hub of anxiety and fear, an essential but capricious environment in which you might be shown the door at any moment.

In his new book, "The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences," Louis Uchitelle tells us that since 1984, when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics started monitoring "worker displacement," at least 30 million full-time workers have been "permanently separated from their jobs and their paychecks against their wishes."

Mr. Uchitelle writes on economic issues for The Times. In his book, he traces the evolution of that increasingly endangered species, the secure job, and the effect that the current culture of corporate layoffs is having on ordinary men and women.

He said he was surprised, as he did the reporting for the book, by the extensive emotional fallout that accompanies layoffs. "There's a lot of mental health damage," he said. "The act of being laid off is such a blow to the self-esteem. Layoffs are a national phenomenon, a societal problem — but the laid-off workers blame themselves."

In addition to being financially strapped, laid-off workers and their families are often emotionally strapped as well. Common problems include depression, domestic strife and divorce.

Mr. Uchitelle's thesis is that corporate layoffs have been carried much too far, that they have gone beyond a legitimate and necessary response to a changing economy.

"What started as a necessary response to the intrusion of foreign manufacturers into the American marketplace got out of hand," he writes. "By the late 1990's, getting rid of workers had become normal practice, ingrained behavior, just as job security had been 25 years earlier."

In many cases, a thousand workers were fired when 500 might have been sufficient, or 10,000 were let go when 5,000 would have been enough. We pay a price for these excesses. The losses that accrue to companies and communities when many years of improving skills and valuable experience are casually and unnecessarily tossed on a scrap heap are incalculable.

"The majority of the people who are laid off," said Mr. Uchitelle, "end up in jobs that pay significantly less than they earned before, or they drop out altogether."

At the heart of the layoff phenomenon is the myth, endlessly repeated by corporate leaders and politicians of both parties, that workers who are thrown out of their jobs can save themselves, can latch onto spiffy new jobs by becoming better educated and acquiring new skills.

"Education and training create the jobs, according to this way of thinking," writes Mr. Uchitelle. "Or, put another way, a job materializes for every trained or educated worker, a job commensurate with his or her skills, for which he or she is appropriately paid."

That is just not so, and the corporate and political elite need to stop feeding that bogus line to the public.

There is no doubt that the better-educated and better-trained get better jobs. But the reality is that there are not enough good jobs currently available to meet the demand of college-educated and well-trained workers in the United States, which is why so many are working in jobs for which they are overqualified.

A chapter in "The Disposable American" details the plight of exquisitely trained airline mechanics who found themselves laid off from jobs that had paid up to $31 an hour. Mr. Uchitelle writes: "Not enough jobs exist at $31 an hour — or at $16 an hour, for that matter — to meet the demand for them. Jobs just don't materialize at cost-conscious companies to absorb all the qualified people who want them."

The most provocative question raised by Mr. Uchitelle is whether the private sector is capable of generating enough good jobs at good pay to meet the demand of everyone who is qualified and wants to work.

If it cannot (and so far it has not), then what? If education and training are not the building blocks to solid employment, what is? These are public policy questions of the highest importance, and so far they are being ignored.

(*) (*) ....Loudly clapping.......(y) (y)

Have a lovely Friday and weekend, all. Stay cool wherever your travels might take you. (f)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 02:37 PM

Free your inner Jackson Pollock!

http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

(h) HINT: Start moving your mouse around and left clicking and moving...yea, yea, that's it!

(h) (k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 02:47 PM

The 10 big goals on the ballot were the most popular ideas generated by MoveOn members at over 600 local house parties last week. See below for a full list of the top 10 and the final vote count.
Dear MoveOn member,

The results are in. We're proud to announce the MoveOn member choice for our new, positive agenda:

Health care for all
Energy independence through clean, renewable sources
Democracy restored

These three goals were nominated, debated, and overwhelmingly selected by more than 100,000 people in local house parties and then online. Most groups would say this is a far too risky way to make such a big decision. But it's this grassroots consensus that makes this agenda different and powerful.

So what's next? This month, we'll launch a major campaign for a clean energy future, starting by breaking the vise-grip of big oil in Washington with our "Oil Free Congress" initiative. Expect hundreds of local events, advertising, national media attention and accountability at the ballot box and that's just for the first of our 3 new goals.

Of course, we won't let up in our work to end the war in Iraq, and we'll still respond to immediate threats in Congress. But our new agenda will focus our long-term work, offer voters a positive, inspiring reason to support progressives on Election Day, and push Democrats to think big and fight hard.

Let's be clear: we've chosen big goals here, and seeing them through won't be easy. There are powerful interests who prefer things the way they are, and we'll never match them in sheer dollars or backroom deals.

Our strength lies where it always has: the voice, energy, and creativity of 3 million MoveOn members. If we're going to make health care a right, power America with clean energy, and restore our democracy, we're going to need as many likeminded folks on board as we can get. So today, we're turning to you to help build the team.

Can you think of some folks you know who care about these issues and are ready to roll up their sleeves or even just get their feet wet? You can send them a quick note and invite them to join MoveOn through a simple online form, or just forward this note and ask them to click:

http://political.moveon.org/makeithappen?id=7880-5160248-72tB0ZhVZOJZVOBaC0VZkw&t=4

When the polls closed Wednesday night at 11:59, "Health care for all" and "Energy Independence: clean, renewable sources" were the clear winners for the first and second plank, with 82.8% of voters choosing one or both. We're proud to put these bold, inspiring goals front and center in our work to come.

But for the final plank, things got a little interesting. "Restored constitutional rights" and "verifiable, accurate elections" ended up in a virtual tie for the third slot (0.7% apart) but clearly ahead of the rest of the field.

We took a hard look at what folks were saying about both issues, and realized that they shared a very similar purpose: guarding against anti-democratic abuses of power. When the President puts himself above the law to invade our private lives, democracy is threatened. When thousands of votes are lost or deleted and there's no way to check the results, democracy is threatened. We believe in a country where our rights are safe, and our votes always count that's democracy restored.

It's exciting to know how united we are a full 96.8% of voters chose at least one of these top issues.

P.S. The online vote was between the 10 most popular goals that MoveOn members generated and sent in from over 600 house parties last week. Here are all of the "MoveOn top 10" and the final vote count for each:

Health care for all 65091
Sustainable energy independence 61030
Restored constitutional rights 35675
Guaranteed accurate elections 35133
Global leadership through diplomacy 28912
High quality education for all 27874
Solutions to global warming 26306
A guaranteed living wage 25527
Publicly funded elections 21096
A balanced federal budget 20945

During the voting, moveon.org members were asked to add their own words about why these goals are so important. Here's what just a few had to say:

Health Care for all:

We need a system that is equitable and affordable for all...Health care should not be treated like a commodity. We have 46 million uninsured and many million more who are underinsured and don't have adequate health care. It is estimated that 18,000 people die each year because they don't have adequate health care that works out to 50 people every day. We cannot continue to tolerate a fragmented health care system which worries more about profits and stock holders than it does the well-being of Americans. It is time for a systemic change which will bring down the cost of health care. - Rebecca E. from Ithaca, NY.

I think that people with health care sometimes think that this is just a problem for the uninsured, but that is absolutely not true. Even if you have health care and develop a serious illness (cancer, MS, etc.) while covered by your employer, you better be sure you love your current job. Because if you decide you want to change direction in your life, you will become all too familiar with the words "preexisting condition". You will find you most likely cannot get coverage from a new provider. This system traps us all, insured and uninsured. We need comprehensive, affordable health care so that all of us can have the freedom to live our lives the way we want to, doing what we love, not being trapped by the health care system. - Rebecca p. from Moose, Wyoming

Energy independence through clean, renewable sources:

The American people and American business have the ingenuity and determination to find energy solutions that will dramatically reduce greenhouse gases and actually allow the economy to thrive...Let's elevate the discussion and generate new and better ideas. This effort will require all of the types of resources we can imagine, including, solar, wind, and demand reduction strategies. Let's put everything on the table and align the incentives of the business community with what is best for the future of the planet. It is a poverty of our generation that we can't make a few meager sacrifices to ensure that the wondrous world we have inherited is passed on to future generations. - Sarah W. from Florissant, Missouri

Just imagine what the world would look like today if we spent 300 billion dollars on alternate energy research, investment and subsidies instead of the Iraq war. I believe that investment would have lead to a far safer United States, well on its way to energy independence and with fewer enemies. It would have also put the US in the leadership position in the world in developing and commercializing these technologies. Our sons and daughters would be inheriting a technology leadership position in alternate energy rather than a massive deficit to pay off. With Bio fuels in the mix, it also has strong appeal in the traditional Republican farm states. No single other issue has the potential to unite so many Democrats as well as crossover Republicans. Lets make this our issue an own it! - Duane B. from Vashon, Washington

Democracy restored:

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said recently: "It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings." This administration and the Republican Congress...have planted the nation's course firmly on a path that veers sharply from the constitutional form of government that is our heritage. We have to take our country back; we have to boot those people that are hijacking our country; that has to be first. - Catherine R. from Hot Springs, South Dakota

If Americans are to participate in their democracy, they need to know that it is honest, and their vote count is accurate and fair. Recent Presidential elections have not left Americans knowing that every voter, every precinct, every State had the most accurate and honest vote possible. An honest electoral process will bring leaders who are trusted and the majority rule principal will show other nations the way to achieve a democratic society for themselves. - Carol M. from Molalla, OR

(*) (*) (y) (y) (y) Hip, hip horay for grass-root efforts such a moveon.org. I usually participate, calling and/or writing letters to state senators (one is SUCH a conservative A**) and state representatives. It is truly amazing what individuals can do when everyone assumes that their own efforts count. (i) (i)

....And, these are positive efforts, not just calling Dubya an idiot and not **doing anything** - we are talking individual citizens as change-agents taking ACTION, and when their efforts are aggregated - often HUGE things happen.....

<My hands are clapping loudly in appreciative appause for moveon.org and their members.> ({) (}) 's to all of them for geting off their butts and doing something to create an enomous seachange in D.C. and in many states in 2008 and again two years later!

Run those warmongers outta Dodge....eh, I mean, D.C. and in certain red state capitols.

Ra, ra, ra! (where's some pom-pom icons when I need them?) ;)

Carpe Diem!

Sweetlady and Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 03:01 PM

http://www.pgacon.com/KitchenMyths.htm

:o :o Some really cool ones. There were a couple of new favorites. The last one surprised me as I often make tea (in the winter months) using a microwave.

Hmm, something new everyday to learn. :)

Back to the books soon.

(f)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 03:03 PM

The name of the game is Petals Around the Rose. The name of the game is important. The computer will roll five dice and ask you to guess the score for the roll. The score will always be zero or an even number. Your mission is to work out how the computer calculates the score and become a Potentate of the Rose.

http://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-j.htm

Enjoy!

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 03:14 PM

hmmm.....

http://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-bg.htm

(i) (i) Anyone figure it out yet? I would LOVE to know. :)

(h) (h)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 03:20 PM

AMORE

When the moon hits your eye
Like a big pizza pie
That's amore.

When an eel bites your hand
And that's not what you planned
That's a moray.

When our habits are strange
And our customs deranged
That's our mores.

When your horse munches straw
And the bales total four
That's some more hay.

When Othello's poor wife
becomes stabbed with a knife
That's a Moor, eh?

When a Japanese knight
Used his sword in a fight
That's Samurai.

When your sheep go to graze
In a damp marshy place,
That's a moor, eh?

When your boat comes home fine
And you tied up her line
That's a moor, eh?

When you ace your last tests
Like you did all the rest
That's some more "A"s!

When on Mt. Cook you see
An aborigine,
That's a Maori.

Alley Oop's homeland has
A space gun with pizzazz,
That's a Moo ray....

A comedian-ham
With the name Amsterdam
That's a Morey.

When your chocolate graham
Is so full and so crammed
That smore.

When you've had quite enough
Of this dumb rhyming stuff
That's "No more!", eh?

(*) (*) :) :) (h) (8) (8) (8)

Was thinking of those "smore" this past holiday weekend....;)

Air-(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 03:21 PM

http://www.beecy.net/frank/

Strangers on my flight,
turbans they're packin'.
Wonderin' if they might,
plan a hijacking.
They could pull a stunt,
before this flight is through.

Something's on their minds.
I saw them mutter.
What that in their hands?
Looks like box cutters,
I'm gonna kick some ass,
if they make a move.

Strangers on my flight.
Two smelly people,
and they're not talking right;
and in a moment,
I will grab a baseball bat;
and that will be that.
Swing like Joe DiMaggio,
and rip them both a new a-hole.

And if they pick a fight,
and try to screw us,
I'll punch out their lights,
just like Joe Louis.
It would feel so right,
for strangers on my flight.

Ratta Tat Tat Tat,
Budda Bing Bang Boom,
Zooma Zooma Zoom.

Send those bastards to the moon....

(i) (i) TGIF! (f) (f) How some creative folks come up with this and sounding like ole Blue Eyes makes it fun.

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

deliciouslytish

06-02-2006, 03:21 PM

well here is the latest for the the butch gallery....

http://ahhtish.com/pd/theButch.html

and one for the the leather bois

http://ahhtish.com/pd/bois.html

I invite you to enjoy!

tish

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 08:12 PM

(~) (~)

Bree (Felicity Huffman) gets the shock of her life when a week before her final sex change surgery she discovers a son she didn't know she had. After bailing him out of jail the two set out on a cross-country journey riddled with road bumps. Huffman won numerous awards (and an Oscar nomination) for her role as a man longing to be a woman. Elizabeth Pena, Burt Young, Kevin Zegers and Graham Greene co-star.

(y) (y) Reviews: This movie absolutely blew me away. It was so much more than I thought it would be. A very real and informative story about a male-to-female transgendered woman who is forced to go on a journey of self-discovery before she can undergo gender reassignment surgery. Through tears and laughter, Bree and her son Toby bring out the best in each other, as they travel across the country. I left the theater with chills.

(~) (~) Felicity Huffman should get a "best actress" nomination for this one. She is totally credible as a man-becoming-woman who is looking forward to the final surgery while still unsure of herself as a woman. It's her therapist who insists that she connect with her previously unknown son, and she does so reluctantly, pretending to be a sort of missionary "church lady" in order to offer him a ride to Los Angeles. The young actor who plays the son also delivers a solid performance, although it's a mystery why this rebellious young drug abuser becomes so compliant so quickly. Suspense builds up: toward the end I kept wanting to say, "Tell him, for God's sake!" There are moments of comic relief, especially from the grandmother who is delighted to be presented with her first grandchild, never mind that he's a scruffy teenager. But mostly this is a surprisingly believable, engrossing drama.

(*) (*) I gave it four stars on netflix.:)

"Transamerica" was highly recommended because I gave four & five stars to:

Brokeback Mountain

Mrs. Henderson Presents

Angels in America (2-Disc Series)

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Torch Song Trilogy

Fahrenheit 9/11

The Trip

Monster

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 08:30 PM

http://flickr.com/photos/digitaldust/88847257/in/pool-tuawrigs/

;) (h) :)

(f) (f) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 08:42 PM

By JOHN MURRELL

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 GMSV (Good Morning Silicon Valley)

Let's talk for a few minutes today about how you're trying to take my job. By "you," I mean all y'all, the vast public throbbing with creativity and wired up with broadband. And by "me," I mean me and JP and countless writers, photographers, filmmakers and artists who historically have constituted the class of Professional Creative Types. These latter folks used to be identified by their trade names, but starting with AOL's growth surge in the early '90's, accompanied by the birth of the Web, they became known collectively as "content providers," the people who were paid to produce the editorial material in between the ads. That's how it worked with newspapers and magazines and television, and to media companies that's how it looked like it would work on the Web. Silly media companies.

(*) Take a gander at what's happening, as illuminated in the latest report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. It found that 48 million American adults -- 35 percent of Internet users -- have contributed some form of user-generated content to the Internet (that's adults -- you'll have to factor in all the kids posting to MySpace and the like). Of those users, 36 million posted their own artwork, photos, stories and videos. Empowering this urge to share is broadband penetration -- of those who contributed content to the Net, the report found, 73 percent had high-speed connections. The Web is "shifting now to user-generated content," said John Horrigan, associate director of research for the project, "It shows people engaging with the Internet in a number of different ways in their lives. It shows that people are pretty interested in using the technology to put something of themselves on the Internet, not just pull down information from the Internet."

Bingo. This is the rude awakening awaiting any media company that's still snoozing. Consumers are no longer restricted to consuming. "It's the mass talking to the mass," said Jesse Drew, associate director of technocultural studies at the University of California-Davis, specifically talking about video-sharing site YouTube but laying out the general principle. "Now there's no central spigot that everything comes out of." Writing in GigaOM, Robert Young says, "Today's social networks (along with other forms of social media, like blogging and online video-sharing) are just the tip of iceberg when it comes to the long-term potential of digital self-expression. ... To some extent, self-expression should be viewed as a new industry, one that will co-exist alongside other traditional media industries like movies, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. But in this new industry, the raw materials for the 'products' are the people." Young goes on to make the case that the primary job of a successful social networking site will be to manage the relationships among users who both consume and produce.

Well and good, says Nick Carr, but he raises two concerns about what he calls "the global karaoke machine": Is there any money to be made serving as a user-to-user clearinghouse? And how close is this to a zero-sum game? "If people are busy creating their own private reality shows, how much time and interest will they ultimately have for reading newspapers or going to the movies?" Carr asks. "Self-commoditization is in the end indistinguishable from self-consumption. And narcissism is a very deep well. Young may be right that 'digital self-expression' is an iceberg. But if that's so, the traditional media business may be the Titanic."

http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband_trends2006.pdf

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/14698740.htm

http://gigaom.com/2006/05/29/social-networks-are-the-new-media/

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/05/the_global_kara.php

(*) (*) Last sentence speaks volumes! :| :| LOTS of change and it's been coming based on bleeding-edge enabling technologies becoming "consumerized" for the past 15 years.:o

Carpe Diem!

Sweetlady and Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 08:48 PM

By Robert Young

No one can argue that MySpace has been the “it girl” for the past year. And the fact that she belongs to Rupert Murdoch only seems to have heightened the envy, and gotten everyone’s knickers in a twist. As a result, it seems that nearly every media company and venture capital fund on the planet is out on the dance floor stumbling over one another to see if they can identify the next breathless social networking beauty.

Yet in all this craziness, it would behoove those looking into this space to step back for a moment, take a deep breath, and realize something fundamental… social networking is a micro-phenomenon of a much larger macro-trend that the Internet has spawned since its birth… digital self-expression. And today’s social networks (along with other forms of social media, like blogging and online video-sharing) are just the tip of iceberg when it comes to the long-term potential of digital self-expression.

Much like corporations leveraged Internet 1.0 by creating digital storefronts and giving rise to ecommerce, people around the world are now learning how to leverage the incredible power inherent in the URL to create what is essentially a parallel universe of digital identities. And just like all things Internet, digital identities are not subject to the boundaries of geography, or the laws of physics, or any of the other limitations of being a carbon-based life-form. As such, the extensibility and scale of the “digital you” is far-reaching, as are the strategic implications to the media industry. In many ways, the art-form of self-expression has become the “new media”, and social networks are their distribution channels.

It’s crucial to understand that social networks are architected to help scale self-expression to new heights, both in terms of the extent of self-expression as well as the reach of distribution (e.g. number of “friends” and the effects of the whole six degrees of separation thing). A simple example… a person on MySpace can have thousands upon thousands of friends. This was not possible before the Internet, and even prior online communications & community innovations like email, chat/forums, and IM didn’t truly enable this kind of scale. Moreover, a person can now express him/herself with multidimensional, multimedia depth via text, photos, audio and video… again, to a degree that was not really possible before.

To some extent, self-expression should be viewed as a new industry, one that will co-exist alongside other traditional media industries like movies, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. But in this new industry, the raw materials for the “products” are the people… or as Marshall McLuhan might say, “the people are the message” when it comes to social networks. So for any player who seeks to enter this industry and become the next social networking phenom, the key is to look at self-expression and social networks as a new medium and to view the audience itself as a new generation of “cultural products”.

In the past century, the creation of cultural products was centered in Hollywood. Now, social networks are broadening the scope of cultural media to include “identity production” (a very appropriate term coined by danah boyd), all the while decentralizing the ecosystem out to the edges. For traditional media companies that are seeking to enter this space (e.g. MTV, Martha Stewart, etc.), it’s critical to follow the audience into the development of this new market by re-focusing core assets that have the capability to deepen the level, and heighten the production value, of self-expression.

Think of this way… what if “American Idol” had been produced solely by the capabilities of the contestants themselves, without the expertise and talent of the show’s producers, directors, writers, etc. As talented and entertaining as the contestants are, the resulting production quality, the level of emotional engagement, viewership/ratings and monetization potential of the full package would likely be far inferior to what we all see on the air today. Well, social networks should be seen in a similar way… people want to express themselves and the platforms that allow them to do so with the most creativity and production value, are the ones that people will flock to.

http://gigaom.com/2006/05/29/social-networks-are-the-new-media/

(*) (*) (y) (y) :) (h) :)

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 08:50 PM

"Politics is much more of an art than a science; art is probably too nice a word for it. It's a right-brain thing. These guys really come out of a left-brain kind of world. A lot of them who are very well-meaning, very effective, smart people, still have a hard time intuitively understanding how Washington, D.C., works."

-- Rick White, the former head of the lobbying group TechNet, on Google's rough start in gaining political traction (one sore point with the current administration -- in 2004, 99 percent of Google employee political contributions went to Democrats).

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003025348_googlelobby29.html

(*) (*) Well THAT was no surprise! ;)

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 08:56 PM

A group of visitors to Apple's snazzy new store in New York City last week got to enjoy the resplendent scene a bit longer than they anticipated after getting trapped in the showpiece glass elevator for 45 minutes. The shoppers were eventually freed by New York's finest, and the casualty list was limited to two people with blistered hands from the hot lights in the shaft. This, of course, is what happens when you don't maintain absolute control over your hardware.

http://ranex.blogspot.com/2006/05/stuck-at-apple.html

(*) (*) I was stuck between the 8th and 9th floor in an elevator in an old building in NYC about 13 years ago. I broke all of my acrylic nails scrambling to open the glass door to the telephone. Only later did I find out there were cameras and that the security guys could see me in a total panic. What a laugh it was for them.......and terrifying for me....:| :|

It is of course nice to smile as I write about it now.;)

:| :| Oh well, back to researching and listening to remote thunderstorms get closer.

(S) (S) Have a lovely rest of your evening,

(k) (k) 's

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 09:02 PM

In the hustle and bustle of this technologically packed world you may decide you really don't want to achieve any lasting success in your lifetime. Sure, you can find a lot of strategies and tips here that can help you increase your success rate. But what about the people who are perfectly happy not achieving anything? Is it fair that I keep pushing and prodding if someone is content leaving behind a legacy of debt and mediocrity? hmmm...maybe not. So this is for all the people who want to have goals but not achieve them.

1. Make your goals vague - When setting your goals, use adjectives such as "more" and "some." Goals like "I want to make more money" or "I want to lose some weight" virtually guarantee your progress will be minimal. Be as wishy-washy as possible. And while you're at it, you might want to set a goal of getting a job doing something.

2. Make your goals difficult to visualize - A good way to do this is to keep changing your mind on the details of your goal. If you are thinking a goal such as: "I want to own a red, blue or yellow Corvette or just a Mustang", then you are definately on the right track. If you kept that goal planted firmly in your mind, you are virtually guaranteed you'll never go above a used Hyundai.

3. Think and speak negatively about your goals - Try using words like "I can't" and "It's too hard". Goals such as "I can't get a promotion, It's too hard to take on more responsibility" will certainly keep you at the bottom of the food chain. If you can put it in writing or work up enough courage to tell your boss directly, he or she will almost definately avoid promoting you from that point on. Who knows, you might get lucky and get fired! It's worth a shot anyway.

4. Avoid planning incremental steps - It's likely that if you have made it this far you are already following this rule already! Take a goal - even a specific goal like "I will double my income by this time next year". Then simply leave it as-is. Don't write down any tasks or steps you'll need to complete in order to achieve it. Just consider the goal a wish and nothing more. Creating a step-by-step plan will only confuse matters because it's all too easy to take action on simple steps. Action in the direction of your goal would lead to success and you definately don't want that.

5. Don't Do - Talk - Because talk is easier than action, this step one of the easiest steps for you to take. Try to fill up as much of your day with socializing as possible. Talk about all the things you will do someday or that you were gonna do. Just make sure you don't mess it up by doing anything productive. Action is your enemy. Embrace your excuses!

6. Wait until you are motivated - Let's face it, it's much too difficult to go jogging or open a mutual fund account when you simply don't feel like it. So just wait. Waiting gives you the peace of mind that someday, you might do something. But not yet, the timing isn't right and you aren't motivated anyway.

7. Don't set a date - Setting a date when you expect to achieve your goal is too much pressure. Who needs it? Definately not you if you want to avoid progress. You know that goals with dates get done, so by not setting a date you avoid making a commitment. You can keep putting off stuff. Even though people may ask "When are you ever going to get around to reaching your target?", you have a wild card. By not having a date, you can put off actually doing anything.

8. List why it's impossible - Now we are getting into the mental game of failing. This is quite possibly your greatest weapon against achievement because it destroys hope and optimism. So as soon as possible, set aside some time to create a long list of how impossible your goal really is. No matter what your target is, I am sure you can come up with plenty of reasons why it's impossible. Be creative, make up some if you have to (i.e. "It's impossible for me to lose weight because I was kidnapped by space aliens and injected with a fat-serum.") Bonus: You get extra points if you can come up with an excuse using UFOs, ghosts or the Bermuda Triangle.

9. Don't research your goal - You're the kind of guy or gal who likes to "wing it." Reading about how others have succeeded achieving a goal similar to you is just a waste of time. Instead of standing on their shoulders, they should be standing on yours! Sure, they might have overcome unbelievable odds to get from homelessness to CEO or 450lbs to a 180lbs - but they were probably just "lucky" anyway. Don't read anything that promises to help you get to your destination.

10. Think of anything except your goal - Here's another mental strategy that will put you on the fast track to failure. Think of anything except for your goal. Why visualize success when there's plenty of clouds, teddy bears, and TV reruns to think about? And while you're at it, take action on these flights of fancy instead of your goal. I know what you're thinking...you're thinking "I wonder if there are any green teddy bears out there?" Now you're getting it! Focusing on your goal for long periods of time can be difficult and challenging. Thinking about unicorns is easy and fun. Take the easy path, that's the only way you can fail in record time.

To conclude, I know you might be a bit overwhelmed with all the work you have to do to avoid reaching your goal. You might even think it's even more work. Never fear! You can do it. Print out a copy and hang it on your bathroom mirror. Post it in your office. Read it every day. Internalize these principals and you can reach depths of failure you have possibly never imagined!

http://goalsuccess.typepad.com/goaltips/2006/05/10_steps_you_ca.html

:|
:|
:|
:|
:|
:|
:|
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;) ;)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 09:05 PM

http://www.math.unipd.it/~favero/varie/ragazzauk.html

:|
:o
:)

;)

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-02-2006, 09:07 PM

Underwater video:

http://tinyurl.com/n6935

(S) (S) 's

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

DallasLesbian

06-03-2006, 05:20 PM

Hi everyone!

I'm starting this thread to provide a forum for quotes, favorite URLs, favorite films, books, ANY thoughtful review of some movie, book, quote or other reference. Link to the actual reference is appreciated! Let's start a Butch-Femme favorite ARTS thread here!

If there are favorite photos/artwork in the gallery, please note it here in the threads.(f) (f)

Love, Peace and White Light,
(k) (k) Sweetlady(k) (k)

Surprised I am just seeing this forum.............I have a pic that I perv on all the time in the gallery.......the pic reminds me of peace, love and hope. The reason why is not just in the pic it'self but in the people who are in the pic. Watching them is special. They are perfect together and when I see this particular pic it gives me great hope. It is my favorite pic on the whole websight.

http://www.butch-femme.com/galleries2/showphoto.php?photo=415 (http://www.butch-femme.com/galleries2/showphoto.php?photo=415)

sweetlady

06-03-2006, 06:13 PM

Surprised I am just seeing this forum.............I have a pic that I perv on all the time in the gallery.......the pic reminds me of peace, love and hope. The reason why is not just in the pic it'self but in the people who are in the pic. Watching them is special. They are perfect together and when I see this particular pic it gives me great hope. It is my favorite pic on the whole websight.

http://www.butch-femme.com/galleries2/showphoto.php?photo=415 (http://www.butch-femme.com/galleries2/showphoto.php?photo=415)

WOW, WOW, WOW!!!

Thank you so so much for posting and providing the URL.

I felt as if there were HOPE.

And, hope is just what I needed. (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l)

If you would like to talk more? PM me here. (l) (l)

Love,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

DallasLesbian

06-03-2006, 06:22 PM

WOW, WOW, WOW!!!

Thank you so so much for posting and providing the URL.

I felt as if there were HOPE.

And, hope is just what I needed. (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l)

Love,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

How sweet...........I'm glad that I shared it and I'm equally glad it was shared at the right time.

LADY FLAMEZZZ

06-04-2006, 07:03 PM

Surprised I am just seeing this forum.............I have a pic that I perv on all the time in the gallery.......the pic reminds me of peace, love and hope. The reason why is not just in the pic it'self but in the people who are in the pic. Watching them is special. They are perfect together and when I see this particular pic it gives me great hope. It is my favorite pic on the whole websight.

http://www.butch-femme.com/galleries2/showphoto.php?photo=415 (http://www.butch-femme.com/galleries2/showphoto.php?photo=415)

we think your pretty special too ....ya big ole' perv,lol
;)
:[ (f) :[

DallasLesbian

06-04-2006, 07:09 PM

we think your pretty special too ....ya big ole' perv,lol
;)
:[ (f) :[

:$

you sure it's not just cuz of Amanda?

LADY FLAMEZZZ

06-04-2006, 07:39 PM

:$

you sure it's not just cuz of Amanda?

i'll never tell.........................winks at Amanda!!!
;)
Daddi is gonna have a Daddi day tomorrow DL i have to go back to work,lol

HY says ok woman ya had surgery ya had recoup time..now get ya cute adorable azz back to work,lol
:|
so Hy will need ya tomorrow Dl...i know Hy gonna miss me,lol
:D (a) :D

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 04:37 PM

http://www.calendars.com/dbs/xq/asp/TID.{4B1DA9CF-88EC-42E9-8092-271FC2F29135}/PID.1/MGID.8298/IID.27372/qx/product.htm

(l) (&) (l) (&) (l) (&) (l)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 04:39 PM

BY LOOKING AT A PICTURE OF A PERSON, YOU HAVE TO DECIDE IF HE IS A COMPUTER GEEK OR A SERIAL KILLER. GO WITH YOUR GUT FEELING AND CLICK ON YOUR CHOICE. THERE ARE 10 PHOTOS. YOUR SCORE WILL BE GIVEN AT THE END.

http://www.malevole.com/mv/misc/killerquiz

:| :| I got a 5 out of 10 because they ALL looked like killers to me......:o :o ;)

:)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 04:42 PM

Unusual Work From Home Jobs

By Candace Corner
CareerBuilder.com Writer

You'd love to work at home, but you're not sure how to do it, or maybe you'd love a second income but you're not ready to revisit the grueling days of part-time retail or restaurant work that fueled your income in the past.

While most of us aren't lucky enough to have the flexibility of a job that lets us work from home, there are alternatives beyond the mystery shopping and online surveys. A further look into any of these five alternatives could offer a little creativity, a little extra cash, or at the very least, a change of pace in your work schedule.

Online Teacher or Professor

What they do:
Apply their teaching to an online learning structure, enabling students on campus or in remote locations to access information, interact and learn. Most high schools, colleges and universities are looking to keep up with the high demand for distance learning courses. Online instruction is available at select schools as a full-time opportunity, and most institutions offer part-time curricula or a hybrid alternative of combined online and in-class teaching to better accommodate students.

What you need:
In addition to completing the degree requirements for a teaching licensure at the educational level you teach, online instruction also requires strong computer technical skills. Lorae Roukema, professor at Campbell University in N.C., teaches both in-class and distance learning and suggests Blackboard, an online teaching tutorial, as a great tool in testing and aiding comfort with computer technology for teaching purposes.

What it pays:
Earnings range between $25,460 and $99,980. Earnings for faculty varies further according to rank, geographic location, type of institution and field.

Exotic Pet Sitter

What they do:
Much like dog or cat sitters, the responsibilities of the sitter are to feed and care for the pets of their clients. Exotic pet sitters are more likely to tend to the pet case needs of reptiles, exotic fish and farm animals. Working from home requires a flexible schedule and designated room for overnight care or a reliable form of transportation.

What you need:
Some clients may only require your previous experience or current experience as a pet owner and/or caretaker of exotic pets. Due to the attachment and investment of exotic animals, first-time clients are more likely to go through an agency or to hire someone with an accreditation. The National Association of Professional Pet Sitters assists with training, public relations and marketing, and information on care, for an annual membership cost.

What it pays:
Rates are up to the discretion of the sitter, but the average standard visits range from $13-$24 a visit.

Massage Therapist

What they do:
Apply pressure to different areas for the body to relieve pain, stimulate blood circulation and assist the lymphatic system. Massage therapists are employed at hospitals, spas and assisted-living homes, but may also work independently from home or by making house calls.

What you need:
In addition to your high school diploma or associate's degree, you will need a certification in massage therapy. Requirements for accreditation vary by state. Working from home requires designating a separate space in your house and purchasing the massage bed, oils, towels and other equipment needed to implement massage therapy.

What it pays:
Median earnings, with gratuities included, reported to be $15.36 an hour. Hourly earnings range from $7.16 to $32.21. 15-20 percent of a massage therapist's earning come from tips.

Figure Model

What they do:
Pose partially or fully nude at art schools and professional artist studios in order to create a visual comprehension of figure for drawing, painting and sculpture. Reliable transportation is key, since punctuality is the most important characteristic a figure model can have.

What you need:
It's extremely important that the model have a positive body image -- or the courage to try -- as well as the ability to hold positions for long periods of time. Because the purpose of figure modeling is to provide a visual aid for form study, artists and schools may seek a model specifically by gender, race, physique and previous experience. Schools, such as the Art Institute of Chicago, require forms for application and employment to find models fitting the description they are looking for.

What it pays:
The standard rate of pay usually starts at $10 an hour and goes up to $120. Pay ranges based on geographical location and ability.

Personal Fitness Trainer

What they do:
Motivate and educate people on the most-effective ways to exercise, the correct forms to use while exercising and diet to follow in order to meet their health goals and maintain a healthy life. Personal trainers adjust diet structures and exercise forms to the needs and schedules of their clients. Like massage therapists, personal trainers can follow traditional means of employment by working for gyms and recreation centers, or they can work by making house calls and working from home.

What you need:
Certification in personal fitness training and a dedication to personal health and fitness. Leadership and strong personal skills are also a big help to maintaining a strong client relationship. To work at the houses of your clientele, you will need reliable transportation and a flexible schedule. If you'd rather set-up shop at your residence, you will need a home gym system, complete with all the free weights, benches, machines and space necessary to kick your clients into shape. The National Federation of Personal Trainers also offers specialty and master training programs.

What it pays:
The annual median income is $25,470. Salary ranges from $14,350 to $55,560. Hour spent with the client and flexibility to the client's schedule is a factor in earned income.

http://channels.netscape.com/careers/package.jsp?name=careers/pm/unusualhomejobs

(*) (*) I have been working very hard on #1: that's why the Masters of Science in 2004 and continuing on into my PhD program. I'll be done next year! The BEST news is that I can "work" from anyplace with an exceptional (in my case, I define as WIDE BROADBAND) Internet connection. (h) (i) (h) (i) (h) (i)

(k) (k) 's

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 04:44 PM

The Cars Behind Cars

A new animated movie from Disney takes cars and creates characters which reflect their quirks, traits, and details

By Ronald Grover

The animated film Cars, which Walt Disney will release on June 9, grew from a cross-country trip Pixar creative guru John Lasseter took a few summers back with his wife and kids. For Lasseter, raised in car-crazed Southern California, it was a trip back through his youth when muscle cars and VW bugs competed for his attention with comic books and afternoon cartoon shows. It was also great fodder for the man who created such Pixar classics as Toy Story and A Bug's Life.

The movie's lead is Lightning McQueen, a hot-shot race car who dreams of the fame and money that will come from becoming the youngest car to win the Piston Cup Championship. Lightning McQueen is one of a few characters based on a generic car. But as seen by Pixar's army of computer graphic artists, his co-stars take on unique personalities based on the special characteristics of speed, style, and attitude that the cars they're based on were designed to give their owners.

Source: Pixar, BusinessWeek

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/05/pixar_cars/index_01.htm?campaign_id=netscape_autos

(*) (h)

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 04:45 PM

http://www.untiltheviolencestops.org/go.php

The tickets are a bit steep, in my view.

(l) (l) (l) (l)

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 04:48 PM

Posted 06/05/2006 @ 11:14pm

Bush: Discrimination 'Serves Interests of All

John Nichols The Nation

President Bush has framed his support for a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage as a necessary defense of cherished institutions and practices.

"Marriage is the most enduring and important human institution, honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith," the president said Monday. "Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. Marriage cannot be cut off from its cultural, religious, and natural roots without weakening this good influence on society. Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all." So, you see, denying citizens who love one another and want their relationships to be sanctioned, respected and protected by the state is in everyone's interest – even, Bush assures us, the interest of those who because of their sexual orientation do not meet with this particular president's approval.

Gee, where have we heard this logic before?

Oh, yes, back in 1914, after President Woodrow Wilson dramatically expanded segregation in the federal civil service, a group of African-American leaders led by newspaper editor Monroe Trotter came to the White House to challenge the decision.

Trotter said, "Mr. President, we are here to renew our protest against the segregation of colored employees in the departments of our National Government. We [had] appealed to you to undo this race segregation in accord with your duty as President and with your pre-election pledges to colored American voters. We stated that such segregation was a public humiliation and degradation, and entirely unmerited and far-reaching in its injurious effects…"

Wilson replied, "Segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen. If your organization goes out and tells the colored people of the country that it is a humiliation, they will so regard it, but if you do not tell them so, and regard it rather as a benefit, they will regard it the same. The only harm that will come will be if you cause them to think it is a humiliation."
Surely, President Bush would prefer that supporters of equal rights for gays and lesbians accept that the marriage ban "serves the interests of all."

But a more appropriate response is an echo of Monroe Trotter's reply to Woodrow Wilson: "Mr. President, you are entirely mistaken."
George Bush is entirely mistaken if he thinks that his amendment "serves the interests of all," just he is entirely mistaken if he thinks that bigotry – be it motivated by racial hatred, ethnic rivalry, religious intolerance or homophobia – ought to be sanctioned by the Constitution.

Every freedom struggle is different. The specifics of racial segregation are fundamentally different from the specifics of anti-gay discrimination.

Yet the reality of a president leading the charge against equal protection for a specific group of Americans creates a parallel that is undeniable – and that will prove indefensible in the long run.

History has not been kind to Wilson. It will not be kind to Bush.

Despite his attempt to put a friendly face on his embrace of segregation based on race, Woodrow Wilson is appropriately downgraded in any consideration of the relative merits of the nation's presidents because of his hateful acts against people of color who wanted only to do their jobs.

Despite his attempt to put a friendly face on his embrace of discrimination based on sexual orientation, George Bush will be appropriately downgraded in any consideration of the relative merits of the nation's presidents because of his hateful acts against gays and lesbians who want only to have their relationships respected and protected.

(*) (*) ...history will not be kind to " da idiot". Indeed.(y) (y)

(k) (k) 's

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 04:50 PM

Most Dems Want Progressive Candidates

More Democrats Want Their Leaders to Stand up Against Bush, War

By Steven Thomma

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Monday 05 June 2006

Manchester, NH - Anti-war and anti-Bush fervor is growing among rank and file Democrats, threatening to pull the party to the left and creating a rift between increasingly belligerent activists and the party's leaders in Washington.

Many outside-the-Beltway Democrats want the party to turn forcefully against the war in Iraq and to investigate, censure or even impeach President Bush should the party win control of Congress this fall.

Yet party leaders such as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York have maintained support for the war while criticizing the way Bush handled it, and have shied away from talk of using power to go to after him.

The fault line is evident as Democrats gather for spring and summer sessions filled with demands for bolder action by the congressional wing of their party, especially if they win control of the House or Senate in November.

In New Hampshire, the state that will kick off the party's 2008 presidential primary voting, activists gave thunderous ovations this weekend to Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., when he pressed his anti-war agenda, boasted that he alone among potential 2008 presidential candidates opposed the war from the start, and pushed for a censure of Bush.

In Maine Saturday, state Democrats passed a resolution urging impeachment.

In Ohio, the state that decided the last presidential election and is a pivotal battleground for this year's congressional elections, the state party chairman notes that the two top statewide candidates voted against the war and says 2008 candidates who did support it have some explaining to do.

And nationally, one poll shows that more than eight out of 10 Democrats now believe the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. The same poll for CBS News this spring showed that more than three out of five Democrats want U.S. troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, even if the country is not stable.

In one sign of the shifting sentiment, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, a possible repeat candidate for president, told supporters in an e-mail last week that "most members of Congress, myself included, share some responsibility for getting us into Iraq."

Another potential candidate, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, says he made a mistake in voting to authorize the war.
And those who did vote against it now brag about it.

"My vote against this misbegotten war is the best vote I have cast in the United States Senate since I was elected in 1962," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., told his state's Democratic convention on Friday.

"I never bought into it," Feingold said to applause from more than 600 activists at New Hampshire's state Democratic convention Saturday. "I didn't just write an op-ed (article) about it. I voted against it."

That vote, as well as his opposition to the Patriot Act and his call to censure Bush for eavesdropping on phone calls between the United States and suspected terrorists overseas, brought delegates to their feet in at least five standing ovations.

"He's one who stood up. He's a hero to a lot of Democrats," said Debbie Marcaurelle of Wolfeboro. "It's coming in our direction."

"He was the only one who was really thinking," said Lori Hitchcock, a Democrat from Nottingham. "The others were gutless. ... They're just coming around now because it's so obvious the people are against the war. ... We need leaders, not followers."

"His message resonates with people," said Lou D'Allesandro, a veteran state senator from Manchester who added that presidential candidates who voted to authorize the war "are going to have to recognize that in retrospect it was the wrong thing to do. It's no crime to say you made a mistake."

But admitting a crucial mistake, not to mention coming out in direct opposition to the war, could scare politicians who fear that opposing even an unpopular war could be seen as being anti-military.

"Some of our elected officials feel somewhat leery of looking being weak on national security issues because Republicans have been successful in the past painting Democrats as weak on national security," said New Hampshire Democratic Party chairwoman Kathy Sullivan. "That's where the tension comes from."

That tension created political doubletalk, Feingold said, that hurt the party in 2002 and 2004 because it wasn't clear what Democrats believed.

"There were all kinds of ways that people were trying to be against the war without really being against it," he said after his speech.
In Ohio, two members of the House who voted against authorizing the war top the Democratic ticket: Rep. Ted Strickland, the nominee for governor; and Rep. Sherrod Brown, the nominee for Senate.

"Ohio is growing increasingly wary of the war, both weary and wary," said Chris Redfern, the Ohio Democratic Party chairman.
He said Ohio Democrats would vote for a 2008 presidential candidate who voted to authorize the war, but only if he or she backed off their vote.

"Ohioans are prepared to embrace a candidate who voted for the war, like Sen. Kerry or former Sen. Edwards, who is able to come back as Sen. Edwards has and say, I was wrong," Redfern said.

"Of the serious candidates, any member (of Congress) who voted for it is going to have to articulate their positions here in Ohio about how they changed," he said. "That happens. It happened during Vietnam. It's going to happen in Iraq."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060506G.shtml

(*) (*) I still maintain my "independent" voter registration status since the Dems don't have anything (yet). I still vote for anyone but Repubs for the most part. :)

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 04:54 PM

Howl | posted June 5, 2006 (web only)

As Others See Us

Nicholas von Hoffman The Nation

A few days ago I found myself at a meeting of journalists from around the world. They had been brought to the United States by Harvard's Nieman Fellowship Program and were giving presentations to a small group of mostly older Americans in a Maine Congregational Church.
It was a chance to hear what is on other people's minds. So much of what we get is Yankee-centered, it's easy to believe there are no people elsewhere with other desires and other points of view.

The program was kicked off by Mary Ann Jolley of the Australian Broadcasting Company. Without bitterness and without anger, she discussed the Iraq War and the mountainous lack of enthusiasm for it in her country. Though she didn't allude to it, you could not listen to her without meditating on the number of times the people of this far-off land had shouldered arms to take part in remote slaughters engaged in by Britain and the United States.

More immediately, Jolley spoke about the reaction in Australia to the 2002 Bali bombing in which eighty-eight of her countrymen perished. The event, she said, brought home to Australia that it is an Asian nation and that its future must rest on strong ties with other Asian nations. She was too polite to say so, but the message seemed to be that America cannot automatically count on us anymore.
A similar sentiment came from Claudia Antunes, Rio bureau chief for Folha de S. Paulo.

Brazil, she pointed out, is not economically dependent on the United States, with whom it does only a quarter of its foreign trade. Moreover, she seemed to wonder what kind of a future Brazil, the giant of the south, could have with the giant of the north, considering the United States has a protective tariff so high that Brazilian ethanol, the cheapest in the world, cannot get into this country. Antunes sees her country's future lying not with any NAFTA-like treaties but with Mercosur (Mercado Común del Sur), the common market trading agreement among Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

As a group these journalists know more and care more about business and economics than a comparable group of American news people. It is on their minds. It was certainly on the mind of Bill Schiller, the foreign editor of the Toronto Star.

Schiller brought up the lumber import tax dispute, about which most Americans are ignorant and most Canadians are not. The American impost has been ruled in violation of trade agreements eleven times over twenty years and has only recently been settled, sort of. In a pleasant way he reminded his audience how dependent America is on Canadian energy and added that Canada's disillusionment with the behavior of America, its single largest customer, is spurring the idea of constructing a pipeline for selling oil and gas to China and Japan.
Takashi Oshima, a reporter for Asahi Shimbun, spoke of his country's worst nightmare, which is the decision his nation would have to make in the event of an open conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan.

Altin Raxhimi from Albania TV and Transitions Online gave us a different look on the "coalition of the willing." He expressed gratitude for America in the past and fear of America in the future, but after having covered the region, he could say that the former Soviet satellite nations who have sent troops to Iraq have done so in contradiction of public sentiment. Most coalition partners did so because they were afraid that holding back would cost them US aid and trade benefits.

Beena Sarwar, op-ed editor of Pakistan's The News International, remarked that the long on-again, off-again relationship between the United States and her country reminded her of a series of "one-night stands." In similar tragicomic spirit Guillermo Franco of Eltiempo.com in Bogotá, Columbia, told his audience that he believed his country was number one in the length of civil wars, number of militias and export of cocaine, whose number-one customer is the United States.

There were two journalists from Africa present. One was Kim Cloete of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, who said that although the political transition from white dictatorship is what it is cracked up to be, she had forebodings: disease, staggering unemployment, terrible housing, nonexistent sewer and waste disposal systems, lack of electrical power, frightening crime and endemic HIV-AIDS, plus lack of foreign investment. Cloete left the audience with the impression that South Africa needs to have something good happen very soon.

Alice Tatah of Cameroon Radio and Television was not reticent about describing the corrupt authoritarian government under which she must live, nor of the poverty of the people. As with several of the others, Tatah spoke of the international debt weighing on Cameroon and the impossibility of ever discharging it. Again, as with some of the others, she talked about the trade imbalance resulting from American export barriers.

Tatah discussed the effect of American TV and movies on her nation's young people. She said in a very nice way that the nudity, the open sex and homosexuality were offensive to her people, their culture and their ways of life. She might have but didn't talk about the inherent conflict in American notions of diversity as opposed to respect for other people's ways of life.

As with her fellow journalists, Tatah was careful to make a distinction between the American people and their government. She said that she had been taught to read and write by a Peace Corps volunteer who, as she put it, had left the comforts of a luxurious home to go to a hot, insect-infested jungle to give a little girl the tools to open up a new life.

What none of the journalists brought up was how long people around the world will continue to separate the American people from their government and its policies. In the end it is the American people who install those who run that government and make its policies. Of course, many of the journalists come from nations where the people do not rule and so cannot be blamed. What is the American excuse?

(*) (*) Good question. :o :o No wonder so many folks overseas hate Americans since the 2000 election. Oh wait - the U.S. Supreme Court chose Bush for us - he did not actually win the election.......:| :| :| :| :| :| :| :|

As Rosanne Rosannadanna used to say on SNL back in the 1970s: "My father always used to say, the first thing you gotta do is get outta New Jersey!"

In this case, head for the northern Canadian provinces! ;)

:) :)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 04:55 PM

http://www.guerrillanews.com/

(y) (y) Decent web site.(y)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 04:56 PM

http://www.commondreams.org/

(*) (*) ....(y) (y) ..........:)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 04:58 PM

The Cruelest Cuts

As Congress haggles over food stamp cuts, soup kitchens fear longer lines
By Mark Winne

The line for food starts forming at 7:30 each morning. Mostly women, many small children and some single men are shaking off daybreak’s chill hoping to be one of the first 100 people let into the Storehouse, New Mexico’s largest emergency food pantry. It isn’t that this free food distribution center, located just off Albuquerque’s historic Route 66, is stingy; it’s just that the Storehouse has enough donated food to feed only 100 families per day.

“In 1999, we served the equivalent of 200,000 meals each year,” says Lee Maynard, the Storehouse’s executive director. “Right now, we’re serving 1.4 million meals per year, 45 percent more than last year. Things are getting worse.” And if the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives has its way with essential safety net services like the food stamp program, things will be getting much worse for Maynard and thousands of his counterparts at emergency food sites across the nation.

To comply with President Bush’s budget proposal, which includes tax cuts for the wealthy and more money for the Iraq war, both houses of Congress issued separate budget resolutions that prescribe how much money each of its committees must cut. Where those cuts will come from is up to the respective committees. For instance, the House and Senate agriculture committees oversee tens of billions of dollars in expenditures for programs like conservation, food stamps and crop subsidies for commodities like corn, wheat and cotton. According to their respective resolutions, the Senate Agriculture Committee is required to cut $2.8 billion over five years from these programs while the more aggressive House must chop $5.3 billion. Whatever differences emerge between the two committee’s budgets—and there will be differences—will be resolved by a House and Senate conference committee.

So where will the cuts come from? The president’s budget showed uncommon courage by proposing a much-needed limitation on crop subsidies, considered sacrosanct by American agriculture’s commodity producers. Republican congressional leaders don’t appear to be so bold. Rather than face the ire of the likes of the American Corn Growers Association, House and Senate leaders may find it easier to meet their budgetary reduction quota by cutting food stamps, a program whose recipients don’t have access to the well-heeled lobbyists of “Big Ag.”

Bush did propose a $600 million cut in the food stamp program over five years. While not a kingly sum by Washington standards, it’s still enough to eliminate 300,000 lower-income Americans from the nation’s most important nutrition program. But Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, may not be content with making only 300,000 people hungrier. Both chairmen have made statements to the press indicating that a disproportionate amount of agriculture program cuts will come from food stamps, especially if a conference committee favors the House’s higher budget resolution figure.

The impact of such cuts on lower-income families would be enormous. Created by executive order in the early days of the Kennedy administration, the Food Stamp Program is far and away the nation’s most important safety net. For millions of households, food stamp benefits—now encoded on an electronic card that can only be used to purchase food at retail food outlets—are literally the only thing that stands between them and hunger. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the number of people who receive food stamps now stands at 25.5 million—2 million more than just a year ago. Are these freeloading welfare cheats? To the contrary, about half of all food stamp recipients are children and about two million are elderly. The average food stamp benefit equals $1 per meal per food stamp recipient. Hardly enough for that filet mignon food stamp shoppers are so often accused of purchasing.

At the same time that Congress is looking for ways to cut benefits for the most needy, the Senate wants to provide $129 billion in tax cuts over the next five years to households making more than six figures (the House tax cut target is a miserly $106 billion). To put these tax cuts in perspective: According to the Center for Budget Policy Priorities, if the full $5.3 billion in program cuts recommended by the House came out of the Food Stamp Program, this reduction would equal half the benefits that households with incomes over $1 million would receive by extending the current capital gains and dividend cuts through 2010.

The cuts would also unreasonably increase demands on private charity. “If people lose food stamps, the first place they’ll show up is emergency food programs, which are already overburdened,” says Gina Cornia, executive director of Utahns Against Hunger. Utah, which would lose $26 million in food stamp benefits over five years if the full House cut goes through, is ranked by the USDA as having the fifth highest rate of hunger and food insecurity in the country. Like other food banks around the country, Utah’s rely primarily on donations of food to serve needy families. In fact, Utah’s emergency food system spent only $106,000 in cash to buy food for its warehouses in 2004. But food donations have been flat for some time now, says Cornia, who simply can’t imagine how food banks would provide an additional $26 million worth of food to people who formerly relied on food stamps.

Two thousand miles away on Ninth Avenue in New York City, more than 1,100 hungry people line up every day at the Church of the Holy Apostles, one of the largest of the 1,300 soup kitchens and food pantries serving New Yorkers. Echoing the alarm sounded by his Western counterparts, the soup kitchen’s director, the Rev. Bill Greenlaw, recently told the New York Times, “It’s a desperate thing. Every level of government seems to have the same mantra, that these programs are vulnerable.”

The president wants budget cuts, tax cuts and more money for the military. Republican congressional leaders will follow their president. The Senate may try to minimize the pain inflicted on the poor with severe but less drastic cuts on food stamps, while the House, led by Rep. Goodlatte, appears more interested in protecting crops subsidies than worrying about the hungry. In the meantime, Maynard, Cornia, Greenlaw and thousands of other emergency food program operators and anti-hunger advocates see nothing but longer lines and more pain.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2092/

(*) (*) ....and to think that there is a THREE-YEAR waiting list, at least in this part of PA, for getting ON THE LIST for "section 8" housing! It just burns my butt when I hear on ABC's "World News Tonight" last evening - about wasting all of the U.S. senators and representatives' time (THREE DAYS) to discuss Bush's Marriage Amendment. :@ :@

:) :) And now back to my irregularly, irreverent programming.......;) ;)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 05:01 PM

...which is why I absolutely WILL NOT SET FOOT one of their stores...ever.

GO COSTCO! (h) (h) (h) (h) (h) (h) (h)

***************
Thousands to "Quarantine" Wal-Mart as Hazardous to Community Health

WASHINGTON, DC—On Friday, June 2, as Wal-Mart convenes its annual shareholders meeting, thousands of concerned citizens in hazmat suits, face shields and rubber gloves will attempt to "quarantine" Wal-Mart locations across the country.
This "Bureau of Workers Health" organized by Jobs with Justice and the Ruckus Society will be armed with yellow caution tape, health hazard signs, and "Notices of Quarantine."

30 actions are planned nationwide. In Bentonville, AK, low-income residents from across the state will serve Notices of Quarantine to Wal-Mart shareholders as they come in and out of the meeting, directly confronting them about their company's policies. In Cleveland, OH, residents will quarantine a controversial proposed Wal-Mart sited on a toxic waste dump. In Mountain View, CA, 80-year-old members of the Raging Grannies will sing and dance outside a super-center.

The quarantine will focus on Wal-Mart's failure to provide health care to a majority of its employees, an issue currently in the media spotlight. In January, Maryland passed a law compelling Wal-Mart to improve its health care benefits. Now, over 20 other states are considering similar legislation.

"It is outrageous that the largest corporation in the world has full-time workers who are forced to enroll in Medicaid at tax-payers expense," said Jobs with Justice Director, Fred Azcarate. The average pay for a Wal-Mart sales associate is $1,000 below the poverty line for a family of three. Company employees top Medicaid rolls in at least 16 states.

www.QuarantineWalmart.com

Jobs with Justice is a national campaign for workers’ rights. Around the country, local Jobs with Justice Coalitions unite labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations to build power for working people.

The Ruckus Society provides experience, training, and skills to organizations working for environmental protection, human rights, and social justice.

http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/0602-02.htm

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 05:05 PM

Published on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

Our Readers Asked...

Which are the Most Popular Progressive Websites?

Alexa.com rates popularity of all websites on the internet - over 250 million of them. They use a combination of the number of 'users' and 'page views' over a 3-month period to calculate website popularity (Click here to see Alexa's Global Top 500).

Here's how the top 25 progressive websites rank:

(as of June 30, 2004)

Progressive RankingWebsite(as of June 30, 2004)

Alexa Ranking

1CommonDreams.org 5,014

2Village Voice 5,362

3AirAmericaRadio.com 5,697

4DemocraticUnderground.com 6,181

5MichaelMoore.com 7,002

6Daily Kos 7,803

7CounterPunch.org 9,147

8TruthOut.org 10,343

9The Nation 11,750

10MoveOn.org 10,874

11Fahrenheit 9/11 12,202

12AlterNet.org 11,395

13Amnesty International 13,663

14Planet Out 13,621

15BuzzFlash.com 13,149

16ZNet/ZMagazine 14,735

17Doonesbury 19,291

18Washington Monthly 19,317

19Center for American Progress 21,073

20Human Rights Watch 21,418

21DemocracyNow! 21,629

22WorkingforChange.com 21,766

23Greenpeace 24,538

24TomPaine.com 25,159

25MotherJones.com 26,558

(*) (*) Time for some R&R. (as in away from the computer screen). Hmm, only 2 or 3 weeks left for my two Spring Quarter PhD courses. I am so glad no school until July 10th! :) :) What in the world will I do? ;)

Thank goodness I have some travel plans.....and enough time for the first time in three years in-between quarters to actually get-away. I am delighted that the university shortened the quarters to ten rather than 12 weeks and learners have between 2 to 4 week breaks in between quarters. eeeHaaa!

Definitely take Wyatt on one trip for sure.(l) (l) (l) (&) (l) (l) (l)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 05:11 PM

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8694244338798619086

(*) (*) ..........:o ..........;)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 05:12 PM

http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2006/06/125000-record-player-comes-with_06.html

;) ;)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 05:14 PM

http://eepybird.com/dcm1.html

:) :)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-06-2006, 05:16 PM

http://www.inflate.co.uk/

:) :)

Carpe diem,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-07-2006, 02:35 PM

Can the Bella Union survive the whore wars? Will newcomer Hearst force Swearengen into new alliances? Don't miss the season premiere "Tell Your God to Ready for Blood" this Sunday, June 11 at 9pm.

eeeeHaaaaa! <then gingerly stepping down off soap box holding up my petticoats...>

http://www.hbo.com/deadwood/

(*) (*) Third Season and I can't wait! :) :) :)

Drowning in a Nor'easter in PA,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-07-2006, 02:36 PM

;) ;) ;) ;)

http://www.hbo.com/deadwood/games/

(*) (*) I can.

(k) (k) 's,

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-07-2006, 02:46 PM

Running Time: 52 minutes

Genre: Drama

Deadwood's first true elections are approaching, with the offices of sheriff (Bullock vs. Harry Manning, a bartender at Nuttall's Number Ten) and mayor (E.B. Farnum vs. Sol Star) to be contested. Tonight, the candidates are expected to state their case to the townspeople--protocol that unnerves one taciturn incumbent while exciting a more glib one. At the Gem, one of Hearst's Cornish workers is killed, raising Swearengen's suspicions that the incident was a staged Hearst power play. Complications involving Alma's pregnancy alarm Ellsworth and Doc Cochran. Adams' orchestrated foreclosure gives Star a new home, with discreet access next door for Trixie. Jane prepares to share with the camp's children her experiences scouting for General Custer. Dismayed by her inability to make a clean break from the gut-stabbed Tolliver, Joanie contemplates the easy way out. Hearst offers Bullock his political backing in exchange for Bullock's promise to exert influence over certain areas of the camp.

http://www.hbo.com/apps/schedule/ScheduleServlet?ACTION_DETAIL=DETAIL&FOCUS_ID=622287

(y) (y) (y)

(*) Hmm, I just remembered that I bought the Deadwood audio CD last year and never listened to it. I was too preoccupied with Doc being so sick. Got to find that Deadwood music and get ready for Sunday night. If I knew folks around here, I would throw a Deadwood Season Premiere party!:) :) Well, there's always next year or simply throwing a party when I move and get all settled in...;)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Bocer Pup (k) (&) (k)

sweetlady

06-07-2006, 02:48 PM

Animator versus animations"

http://abum.com/file/shadow/animations/17632.swf

:) :)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-07-2006, 02:50 PM

Google's mantra is "Don't be evil," which as corporate mottoes go is the equivalent of "Build an eternal bonfire in the parking lot and fuel it with thousand-dollar bills and the occasional Gutenberg Bible."

The worldwide market for evil is stratospheric, and Google is uniquely positioned to take advantage of it. They've made some halting inroads in China, but economists -- many of whom are themselves evil -- estimate that if Google abandoned its inefficient policy completely, it could capture 38 percent of the evil market. That's more than Microsoft and Lindsey Lohan combined. Here are just a few of the many ways Google could provide cutting-edge, convenient and extremely evil services.

Google Torture
Sure, Google provides access to nearly all the public information on the web, but what about data people aren't willing to share? Google could enhance its core search engine by deploying goons and/or thugs to beat information out of people -- anything from the location of their valuables to interesting sports trivia. Finally you can search on terms like "why did my neighbor come home at 3 a.m. all last week" and expect to get some real answers.

Google Murder
Why pay top dollar for a professional hit man when an amateur will do it for a few bucks and a good alibi? Google could leverage the technology behind Google Answers to match amateur killers with those looking to eliminate a business rival or key witness. While high-end assassins have all sorts of overhead and pass the costs on to you, Google Murder could match you up with sociopaths who were thinking of going on a rampage anyway, and who would be willing to shoot up the office building or motel of your choosing for a reasonable fee.

Google Blackmail
YouTube and Flickr are tough competitors in the world of user-supplied content, but they're hobbled by terms of service that discourage the most profitable content of all: incriminating evidence. Google could use the code behind Google Video to allow users to upload sordid videos and indelicate photos and set them to be displayed after a reasonable amount of time if the ransom isn't met. If the victim pays up, Google gets a cut. If the ransom isn't paid and evidence of degradation and betrayal is made public, everybody wins!

Google Infidelity
More than one affair has brought a marriage to an asset-dividing end thanks to an electronic trail left in the guilty party's browser. With a couple changes to Google Desktop and Google Toolbar, these sad results can be a thing of the past. The code could change the browser history so that searches for "crotchless panties" and "motels that bill by the hour" look like searches for "anniversary presents" and "spouse-only massage classes." And, in case that doesn't work, the software can automatically block access to the websites of private detectives and divorce lawyers.

Google Nudity
Google Earth may give you a great view of the Grand Tetons, but those aren't the natural formations most people using Google Image Search are looking for. Sure, turning off SafeSearch can net you all sorts of porn even if you don't actually want it, but the worldwide demand for naked pictures of famous people still far exceeds the supply. As satellite and rendering technology improve, Google will be in the enviable position of being able to map the topology of anyone who goes outdoors, and extrapolate it into nude pictures indistinguishable from actual perverted photography. Finally you'll be able to see anyone from your favorite movie star to your Pilates instructor naked as a jaybird and twice as aroused.

I think you can see how evil, properly abused by the benevolent tyrants at Google, could benefit us all while only harming most of us. I think it would be a good trade-off, as long as Google doesn't start spamming. Some things are too evil to even consider.

http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71094-0.html?tw=rss.technology

(*) (*) :| :| :o :o :) :) Amen! ;)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-07-2006, 02:58 PM

By JOHN PACZKOWSKI Good Morning Silicon Valley June 7, 2006

Has Google begun recalibrating its Evil Scale? If it hasn't yet, it certainly seems to be considering it. Addressing reporters in Washington yesterday, Google co-founder Sergey Brin admitted that the company has compromised its principles by acceding to Chinese censorship demands and hinted that Google could adjust its stance in the country in the future. "We felt that perhaps we could compromise our principles but provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and be a more effective service and perhaps make more of a difference," Brin said. "Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense. It's perfectly reasonable to do something different, to say, 'Look, we're going to stand by the principle against censorship and we won't actually operate there.' That's an alternate path. It's not where we chose to go right now, but I can sort of see how people came to different conclusions about doing the right thing."

Now perhaps I'm reading too much into Brin's remarks. Perhaps they're nothing more than conciliatory diplomacy. Still, their tone is quite a bit different from that of Google CEO Eric Schmidt's comments in April. "We believe that the decision that we made to follow the law in China was absolutely the right one," Schmidt said at the time. "From our perspective, we must comply with the local law, and indeed, we have all made commitments to the government that we will absolutely follow Chinese law." It seems Google's attitude towards doing business in China is changing. Or perhaps it's managed to peer over its arrogance long enough to realize that offering a censored version of its search services in China isn't going to inspire a sea change in Beijing's attitudes towards censorship and the Internet.

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2006/01/quoted_20.html

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2006/04/_we_actually_di.html

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2006/01/tanks_for_the_m_1.html

http://today.reuters.com/stocks/QuoteCompanyNewsArticle.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2006-06-07T085435Z_01_PEK199183_RTRIDST_0_CHINA-GOOGLE.XML&rpc=66

(*) (*) I didn't know the google folks even created a PowerPoint presentation with an "Evil Scale". :| :| In my view, it's like porn - I don't need to define it, but I KNOW when I feel or sense it......(6) Seems like a low on the importace-scale technological tug-of-war to me since China's government is not likely to change Internet access soon.

(a) (a) (a) (a) (a) (a)

White light & angelic hugs,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup & Canine Angel (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-07-2006, 03:04 PM

http://www.siliconbeat.com/

(h) (i) (h) (i) (h )(i) (h)(i) (h)

(y) (y) Lots and lots of great ideas and latest news. I miss 3000 Sand Hill Road when I once had an office there.......:) With so many blue-chip VC firms based there, it was inevitable running into the stars and others researching and investing in start-ups. It won't ever be like the Booming 1990s, but there is definitely opportunities for tech saavy folks.(h)

Have a lovely Wednesday evening,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-07-2006, 03:08 PM

Friday, March 17, 2006

What is this ball of colors? It is the North American Internet, or more specifically a map of just about every router on the North American backbone, (there are 134,855 of them for those who are counting). The colors represent who each router is registered to. Red is Verizon; blue AT&T; yellow Qwest; green is major backbone players like Level 3 and Sprint Nextel; black is the entire cable industry put together; and gray is everyone else, from small telecommunications companies to large international players who only have a small presence in the U.S. If you click on the map it will take you to much bigger version complete with labels that tell you the address of many of the routers.

I’ve been following the net neutrality debate for a while now. Real briefly, the telecommunications industry is lobbying for the right to manage the traffic that flows over their networks as they see fit. For more read the post linked above. Everyone is focusing on the last mile, which makes sense because that is the part of the network where there is the most congestion. But getting rid of net neutrality would also give the companies that own the fiber and routers at the core of the Internet the ability to manage data there.

When I heard that AT&T was going to buy Bell South, I wondered how much of the backbone this new company would own. With all the attention on the last mile were we overlooking a burgeoning monopoly at the core?

That’s where this map comes in. After about a day of searching around, someone told me about Bill Cheswick, the chief scientist at Lumeta a network intelligence company, who started toying around with a way to map the Internet when he worked at Bell Labs in the late 1990s.

This map is a collaboration between Ches and myself. I’m using the term collaboration in the loosest possible sense. Basically I asked Ches if he was able to tell me who owned the all the routers in North America, and he told me he could try. Over the next week and a half I added impossible request after impossible request (“can you color the routers that are registered to companies that have been bought by AT&T in the last decade blue?”) and he somehow figured out how to do it all.

In order to build this map Ches fired off 300,000 messages to various points on the Internet and mapped how they got there, recording the address of every router his packets passed. He also had to figure out a way to isolate routers in North America. The map is not perfect – he probably missed a few points and maybe double counted a couple more – but for all intents and purposes this is what the North American Internet looks like.

A few notes on reading the map. First, it is not geographic. Things on the right aren't on the East Coast and so forth. It looks the way it looks for readability purposes. The lines are actual connections between routers, but the length of the lines, again, do not correspond to geographic distance. Also, you’ll notice four thick green dots on left. Those routers belong to Bell Canada. Ches says that they probably represent rings around major Canadian cities that all connect at a central point. And in fact if you open the big map that has the labels you can see that some of the routers have different city names in their addresses.

So what can we conclude by looking at this? For starters, while AT&T and Verizon are clearly the two biggest owners at the core (they dwarf Qwest, the other remaining baby bell), they don’t own anywhere near enough for us to be worried about a monopoly. Also, the cable companies really own very little of the core, which isn’t much of a surprise since they are primarily focused on the last mile. Nonetheless, it is startling to see.

I encourage you to play around with the labeled map. You can see which company each router is registered to. Many still have old names like alter.net (now Verizon) and it is pretty interesting to see the extent to which the telecommunications market has consolidated over the last decade. (Also, if you have way to much time you can actually test each domain and see which company the address resolves to.) Sometimes the router address will include a geographic detail that tells you where it is based. All in all, there is a lot of cool information if you want to take a look.

Also, feel free to post questions about the map and what it reveals. I’ll be on vacation next week, but Ches has said he’ll stop by and he can probably answer them better than me anyway.

UPDATE: I want to respond to the first comment. Even though I mentioned the net neutrality debate above, I didn't really mean for this map to be a statement for one side or the other. The net neutrality debate has focused almost exclusively on the last mile. That's not what I am trying to focus on here (although I'm just finishing a feature story on that subject).

The map focuses on the backbone, i.e. where a packet goes after it passes through the last mile and into the core of the Internet. The question I was hoping it would answer was if one or two companies owned enough of the backbone as to give it or them too much control over the heart of the Internet. My feeling is that while AT&T and Verizon own an awful lot, they don't own enough to monopolize the core. For what it's worth, I don't consider that a ringing endorsement for those companies or their practices.

The nice thing about having a map of course is that people can look at it and conclude whatever they want. And hopefully post their conclusions.

Now it's really off to vacation.

http://blogs.cio.com/node/209

(*) (*) (*) (i) (i) (i) WAY, way cool!!! (h) (i) (h)

Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-07-2006, 03:13 PM

http://www.gizmodo.com/

(y) (y) Something for everybody.....:)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-07-2006, 03:25 PM

http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/

(a) I could have spent hours here. GREAT for a rainy day or those times when not feeling all that well and taking it easy. I call these SNACKS FOR MY SYNAPSES...:o :)

(o) ...off to get some research done....another paper this Sunday although it is a short one on learning objects. Easy topic: building blocks for learning. :) (not that I can yet build a virtual Taj or Egyptian pyramid yet...;) ;) Getting close though.(i) (i)

({) (}) .....Oh, almost forgot, I bought some quilts, bright aqua and royal blue summer cotton blankets and the same colors in really soft t-shirt comforter covers last night. Can't wait until they arrive. I've needed to update and make my bed a wonderful place to sleep for a long, long time....... Balance all that left-brain studying and client project working during the afternoons and late evenings and settling down into the most exquisitely beautiful and comfortable place for peaceful sleep and quiet dreaming.(S) (S)

({) (}) & (k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady and Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

myzticreflection

06-07-2006, 03:27 PM

subscribing:D

myzticreflection

06-07-2006, 03:31 PM

I like this alot , so Im stealing it to email a friend (a)

How the Grinch Stole Marriage
by Mary Ann Horton, Lisa and Bill Koontz (with apologies to Dr. Seuss.)
Every Gay down in Gayville liked Gay Marriage a lot......
But the Grinch, who lived just east of Gayville, did NOT!!

The Grinch hated happy Gays! The whole Marriage season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, his Florsheims were too tight.
But I think the most likely reason of all was
His heart and brain were two sizes too small.

"And they're buying their tuxes!" he snarled with a sneer,
"Tomorrow's the first Gay Wedding! It's practically here!"
Then he growled, with his Grinch fingers nervously drumming,
"I MUST find some way to stop Gay Marriage from coming!"

For, tomorrow, he knew... All the Gay girls and boys
would wake bright and early. They'd rush for their vows!
And then! Oh, the Joys! Oh, the Joys!

And THEN they'd do something he liked least of all!
Every Gay down in Gayville the tall and the small,
would stand close together, all happy and blissing.
They'd stand hand-in-hand. And the Gays would start kissing!

"I MUST stop Gay Marriage from coming! ...But HOW?"

Then he got an idea! An awful idea!
THE GRINCH GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!

"I know what to do!" The Grinch laughed in his throat.
And he went to his closet, grabbed his sheet and his hood.
And he chuckled, and clucked, with a great Grinchy word!
"With this beard and this cross, I look just like our Lord!"

"All I need is a Scripture..." The Grinch looked around.
But, true Scripture is scarce, there was none to be found.
Did that stop the old Grinch...? No! The Grinch simply said,
"With no Scripture on Marriage, I'll fake one instead!"
"It's one man and one woman," the Grinch falsely said.

Then he broke in the courthouse. A rather tight pinch.
But, if Georgie could do it, then so could the Grinch.
The little Gay benefits hung in a row.
"These bennies," he grinned, "are the first things to go!"

Then he slithered and slunk, with a smile most uncanny,
around the whole room, and he took every benny!
Health care for partners! Doctors for kiddies!
Tax rights! Adoptions! Pensions and Wills!
And he stuffed them in bags. Then the Grinch, with a chill,
Stuffed all the bags, one by one, in his bill.

Then he slunk to the kitchen, and stole Wedding Cake.
He cleaned out that icebox and made it look straight.
He took the Gay-bar keys! He took the Gay Flag.
Why, that Grinch even took their last Gay birdseed bag!

"And NOW!" grinned the Grinch, "I will pocket their Rings."
And the Grinch grabbed the Rings, and he started to shove
when he heard a small sound like the coo of a dove.
He turned around fast, and off flew his hood.

Little Lisa-Bi Gay behind him sadly stood.
The Grinch had been caught by small Lisa-Bi.
She stared at the Grinch and said, "My, oh, my, why?"
"Why are you taking our Wedding Rings? WHY?"

But, you know, that old Grinch was so smart and so slick
He thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick!
"Why, my sweet little tot," the fake Shepherd sneered,
"The judges are evil, the other states weird."
"I'll fix the rings there and I'll bring them back here."

It was quarter past dawn... All the Gays, still a-bed,
all the Gays still a-snooze when he packed up and fled.
"Pooh-Pooh to the Gays!" he was grinch-ish-ly humming.
"They're finding out now no Gay Marriage is coming!"
"Their mouths will hang open a minute or two
then the Gays down in Gayville will all cry Boo-Hoo!"

He stared down at Gayville! The Grinch popped his eyes!
Then he shook! What he saw was a shocking surprise!
Every Gay down in Gayville, the tall and the small,
was kissing! Without any bennies at all!
He HADN'T stopped Marriage from coming! IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?"
"It came without lawyers, no papers to sort!"
"It came without licenses, came without courts!"
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!

"Maybe Marriage," he thought, "doesn't come from the court.
Maybe Marriage...perhaps... comes right from the heart.
Maybe Marriage comes from all the words the Gays say.
Words like Husband, like Wedding, and Spouse who is Gay."
And what happened then...? Well...in Gayville they say
that the Grinch's small brain grew three sizes that day!

And the Gays had their Weddings. They promised for life.
They swore to be faithful, to Wife and her Wife.
The Husbands were happy, to each other they vowed
To be Out and be Honest, be Gay and be Proud.
They told all their neighbors and friends of their Spouse,
They told of their Marriage and sharing their house.
They said "We got Married." They shouted it loud.
Their marital status was "Married and Proud."

And the minute his heart didn't feel quite so tight,
He whizzed with his load through the bright morning light.
And he brought back the rings, cake and Gay birdseed bags!
And he... ...HE HIMSELF... hung the Gay Rainbow Flag!

The Lord looked down, at the proud and the tall,
and said "These are my children, and I love them all."

The Moral of the Story...

The moral of this story is that we don't need a piece of paper and the approval of the state to get married. We can just get married. Instead of having a committment ceremony, we can have a wedding. Instead of partners, we can have husbands and wives. Instead of calling our relationship a Domestic Partnership or a Civil Union, we can call it a Marriage.

Whether any government recognizes it is separate from what we call it. It's a free country and we can call ourselves what we like. In 5 or 10 or 20 years, with plenty of visible same-sex married couples, the world won't see us as strange or scary, we're just the married couple down the street that happens to be gay. Eventually, the legal recognization of our marriages will follow.

If we allow ourselves to voluntarily sit in the back of the bus, we'll never make any progress. Rosa Parks had to sit in the front of the bus to make a difference. We must as well.

Copyright (c) 2004 by Mary Ann Horton.
Permission granted to copy in whole, with attribution.
This is a parody of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."

sweetlady

06-07-2006, 03:36 PM

subscribing:D

(f) (f) Hi and welcome. It is so nice to "see" you here and that you added my thread to your subscriptions. <putting a kettle on to make some tea> :)

Please feel free to post things that delight or make you feel any other emotion here - that's what I do. Ok, I also try to add what I call a "few syllables" aka comments at the end of something I find and post.

I look forward to reading your postings here, there or wherever here at B-F . It's one of my favorite places.(l) (l)

Warmest wishes,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the now-awake and getting-into-everything Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-09-2006, 03:42 PM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Femme 2006 Conference Announces Evening Entertainment Program

SAN FRANCISCO, California – June 05, 2006 – “Femme 2006: Conversations and Explorations” is proud to announce the entertainment program for the Friday and Saturday night performances at the August 11-13th, 2006 conference at the Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco. (Register at http://www.femme2006.com ) Two amazing nights of performance have been planned at 12 Galaxies (2565 Mission Street at 22nd Street, 415-970-9777). Doors will open at 8pm, show begins at 9pm. Friday night will feature spoken word performers and Saturday night will be an evening of cabaret. Performers hail from all over the world and showcase the variety of talents swirling around in the Femme friendly universe.

Femme 2006: Friday Night Performance Friday, August 11th, 2006 featuring:

Simone De La Getto a.k.a. Teresa R. Ellis, is the Visionary/Artistic Director/Owner/Overseer of Harlem Shake Burlesque. A former member of the S.F. Burlesque Troupe and The Cantankerous Lollies , this singer, choreographer and lead dancer has won the hearts of many, performing at various venues. She's “changing history one shake at a time”!

Dossie Easton is a San Francisco therapist, author, and active sex radical since 1961. Dossie Easton also writes and performs spoken word and poetry which has been described as “spectacularly filthy”: she states her goal in performing is to leave “not a dry seat in the house.” Longtime pagan, poet, feminist, mother, survivor of the politically correct era, leatherdyke, whipmaker slut, she focuses her spiritual practice and her S/M practice on raising Eros as loudly as possible and playing with danger in the bottomless pit.

Veronica C. Combs is an accomplished producer, director, dancer, dance teacher and choreographer, and has been producing groundbreaking lesbian performance programming in the Bay Area since 1995. She is the founder and Artistic Director of liquidFIRE Productions, a non-profit organization dedicated to the authentic representation of lesbians of color on stage and in film. Veronica is the mastermind behind liquidFIRE's lesbian-of-color multidisciplinary theatre company, The liquidFIRE Project, whose original productions are collaboratively created by the cast during a five-month process that examines their experiences in relation to "erotic power." She also created WET, a monthly erotic cabaret and dance party featuring queer artists of color.

Femme 2006: Saturday Evening Cabaret Saturday, August 12th, 2006 featuring:

Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen is Manchester England's very own undead performer extraordinaire. She has been described as ‘one of the country's finest performance poets' and a ‘must-see act' . But poetry is not her only talent - she is also a riveting cabaret chanteuse, entertaining with her own brand of twisted tunes. These include perverse parodies of well-loved songs from Elvis to Andy Williams and Mozart arias.

Del LaGrace Volcano is a gender variant visual artist using herm's own body for politically pleasurably purposes.

Burlesque-Esque wants to be YOUR Tartine morning bun. They like slapdashery, meaningful messages, medium-high kicks and costumes held together by a single safety pin. They've been performing (on stage and off) for 107 years now and can STILL manage to combine sexy dance moves with bringing down the Republican Right. They have an agenda and aren't afraid to show it . . . just make sure you don't try to feed them any low-carb snacks.

Nykieria “Nyki” Chaney is a 24-year-old spoken word artist, playwright, feminist, poet, and speaker. Chaney is regarded as an underground artist, however, that may change with her upcoming autobiographical play. In her writings, Chaney addresses many issues of politics, socio-economic differences, misogyny, and future hopes for the African American community. All of Chaney's written works and her performances command the attention of all who read and hear it, and invites deep contemplation by all who understand it.

For full entertainment line-ups with more complete descriptions and bios of our wonderful performers for both nights, please visit http://www.femme2006.com/events.html.

The complete program schedule for the Femme 2006 Conference is now online @ http://www.femme2006.com/program.html

(*) (*) Has anyone attended this before? Is anyone going? It would be lovely (and I feel alot safer) if I knew others here on B-F who were going.......:)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-09-2006, 03:48 PM

Hot wheeling it with Pixar's John Lasseter
By HAP ERSTEIN

The Palm Beach Post

Wednesday, June 7, 2006

John Lasseter loves embedding jokes in his animated movies that are way over the heads of kids.

Take his latest film, Cars. There are gags here that only gearheads will get.

"One of the things that's really obscure, seriously obscure, is Flo's V-8 Cafe," he says with an amused laugh. "The design of the awnings are like the heads of a flat-head Ford V-8. The spark plugs are there and when the neon is on, they flash in the proper firing order of a flat-head Ford V-8. Those who know, will see it."

Fortunately for the rest of us, there is plenty of the comedy you'd expect from the creative force behind the Pixar animation studio, and the director of the phenomenally successful Toy Story films and A Bug's Life.

Lasseter, a Pixar executive vice president, is passionate about cars. So while it has taken him more than 10 years of making and overseeing computerized animated features on toys, bugs, monsters, fish and middle-aged superheroes, it was probably inevitable that he would get around to a movie about autos, or specifically, a stock car who learns some valuable life lessons on the way to a big race.

"I grew up in Los Angeles and my dad was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership," explains Lasseter, 49. "I grew up going to the dealerships all the time, especially when the new cars were introduced. I just loved that.

Remember? That was so cool. When I was in high school, I would work in the parts department. It was really right at the end of the heyday of the great American muscle car."

But his mother was an art teacher, and in his early teens Lasseter became fascinated with cartoons and animation. He was graduating from high school just as Disney was establishing a college animation program and he became the second student admitted. Each summer, he apprenticed at the Disney Studios, eventually joining the animation department staff, contributing to such films as The Fox and the Hound and Mickey's Christmas Carol. But it was a 1982 film called Tron, which first used computer animation for special effects, that really drew his attention.

Invited to visit the computer graphics shop of George Lucas' Lucasfilms, Lasseter left Disney to join the unit, which gradually morphed into Pixar. Since directing Toy Story in 1995, he has been involved with each of the boutique studio's movies, either directing or executive producing them. Over this time, Pixar's films, including Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc. and The Incredibles, have eclipsed Disney's and generated more than $1.45 billion at the domestic box office.

To Lasseter, though, they are all prelude to Cars, his most personal movie yet.

Its roots are in the workaholic zeal with which he approached each project in Pixar's early days, finishing one film and immediately starting another. During this period, he somehow found time to have four of his five sons, but not much else. And his wife cautioned him, "Be careful. One day you're going to wake up and your boys will have grown up and gone off to college and you will have missed it."

Recognizing that she was right, Lasseter abruptly took off an entire summer, bought a used motor home, packed up his family and took them on a bonding cross-country vacation.

Fortunately, he did not make a film called RV. But the trip did give him the idea for what would become Cars years later. "I came back from that journey and I knew what I wanted this story to be about," he says now. "That a character learns what I just learned, that the journey in life is the reward."

The movie, whose original working title was Route 66, is the tale of hotshot stock car named Lightning McQueen, who has to travel across the nation to a big race, but gets waylaid in the town of Radiator Springs, where he finds the true meaning of friendship and family.

Each Pixar feature has represented major advances in computer animation and Cars is no exception. "It was a bit of a challenge," he concedes. "I wanted to bring cars to life in a way that no one had seen them before. To get the chrome, the metal flake paint, the rubber tires' reflection on the glass, to make that all look so believable."

He resigned himself to the fact that he would have to sacrifice the usual adorability factor. "It's true, cars can't cuddle up next to each other, because they'll scratch each other."

Beyond the look of the automotive characters — McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), Doc Hudson (Paul Newman), Sally Carrera (Bonnie Hunt) and Tow Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), to name a few — Lasseter notes that the larger challenge was "the level of detail. When we were out on Route 66 doing our research, we found that it was pretty amazing to see how the history of every town is told by just looking at it. That visual-rich detail — the faded paint, the rust, the cracks in the sidewalks with grass growing up, the dust and so on, that is so hard to achieve in computer animation. The computer likes to make things perfect and clean.

"The natural world that we're used to seeing has so much visual detail, but you get nothing for free with a computer," he explains. "When you add all that stuff up and you try to render the scene, it chokes the computer, it's just too much for it to handle. The big challenge was how to get that visual rich detail in a way that we could deal with. We brought the computers to their knees in this movie."

Still, Lasseter is quick to add that no amount of state-of-the-art technology can compensate for a weak script. "I've always believed in the simple fact that when the lights dim in the theater, the audiences just want to be entertained. It's the way I am in a theater," he says. "I'm giving you two hours, just take me away and entertain me, y'know? And that I take as a tremendous responsibility. That's the sole focus of what we do."

Pixar does it so well — winning Oscars for Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, the only two films Pixar has released since the category was established — that Lasseter can afford to be magnanimous with the others toiling in the field.

"I love all mediums of animation. The subject matters of the films you make tend to lend themselves to different techniques. Think of Wallace and Gromit. That couldn't be done in any other technique but clay," he says. "I think of what Tim Burton has been doing — amazing work with puppet animation, with Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. You watch the films of Hayao Miyazaki — Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle — and you tell me that 2-D animation doesn't entertain audiences.

"I still believe that audiences want to see good movies. Period. That's why I always believed quality is the best business plan."

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/movies/content/shared/movies/stories/2006/06/lasseter.html

(y) (y) (y) Very, very, cool..(h) (h)

(k) (k)'s

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-09-2006, 04:05 PM

http://cg.channel.aol.com/photo-gallery/best-french-fries

(*) It was great to learn that the first place winner was where I used to go in down town Pittsburgh with dorm-mates and sorority sisters back in college - now we are talking "blowing those mental cobwebs away" time, remembering this!

Seriously, it was an interesting synchronicity that the same day that I saw this french fry story, there were news stories about fast food (ugh) places changing their oils to those with no trans-fats.

:| :| :o Of course, those younger folks don't have to worry about those yet, lucky them!

({) (}) 's to Wyatt: He got his stitches out today. Two vet-techs held him down and took the sutures our while I held his head and kissed his Boxer face - even his chops!:) He really calmed down and didn't even whimper - I guess the initial struggling was when the vet techs turned him on his back like a hamburger (!) and he was very afraid - and wouldn't any of us be scared with similar treatment?

Poor little guy. Well, he IS as of June 5th, 7 months old (^) (^) and well over 50 pounds. He's already taller and longer than Doc the Boxer. (u) (u)

He's going to be much bigger than Doc for sure. I asked for and got from the vet techs at Wyatt's vet's office today - some articles on separation anxiety - Wyatt has been at my side (quite literally) since I picked him up at the airport January 16th. I need to leave him for two to three hours at a kennel to get used to my having to fly for a several-day trip (three of them!) betwen now and Jan, 2007.

:| :| He is an escape artist - and has shaken his fold-down travel crate and gotten out. I may need to buy an airline crate to keep him safe while I'm out on appointments and job interviews.

(i) (i) If anyone has ideas - I would LOVE to hear them. (f) (f) (via PM or post here)

Carpe diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-11-2006, 11:27 AM

Loggerheads (2005)

It's Mother's Day weekend in North Carolina, and three people face life-altering decisions in this poignant triad of interwoven tales. Grace (Bonnie Hunt) returns home to visit her mom and find the child she gave up for adoption; Mark (Kip Pardue) heads to the shore to help endangered turtles procreate and meets a potential mate himself; and Elizabeth (Tess Harper) must decide whether to publicly diverge from the beliefs of her minister husband.

Cast:

Tess Harper Bonnie Hunt
Michael Kelly Michael Learned
Kip Pardue Ann Pierce
Chris Sarandon Valerie Watkins
Robin Weigert Michael Harding

Robin Weigert plays Calamity Jane on Deadwood - Season 3 (it's last real "season") starts tonight.

Reviews:

(~) This movie is incredibly well made. It purposely evolves slowly to capture the characters and allows the (emotional) plot time to develop. It's poignant and very cleverly evinces the social tensions present from the three different story lines. You'll enjoy this film.

(~) An amazingly subtle, powerful, low budget film that doesn't look it (though of course there are no big names). Everything about it had the sheen of glorious summer days and sharp remembrance. Searching is the theme: for home, for love, for acceptance. It's actually two stories told a few years apart and they interweave very subtly; the clues are in the radio broadcasts where Clinton is President, then Bush. It's not spoiling the story to mention that, and it might save some viewers confusion.

(~) I have no idea what made me rent this, but I am really glad I did. This movie follows the lives of very different people, or so it seems. However, as the plot unravels you discover they are all connected in some way. Bonnie Hunt's character has tried to commit suicide and is living at home with her mother. She gave her son up for adoption at 17 because her mother made her. She is forced to deal with issues that she has with her mother, while trying to find her son and sort her life out. Kip Pardue's character is dealing with finding new love and finally having some sort of stability in his life. He left home when he was 17 because his adoptive parents, a father who is a minister, discovered that he was gay. He has to deal with issues he has with himself and his parents, as well as the fact that he is HIV positive. Tess Harper is the wife of a preacher, whose views are very judgemental. Their son is a homosexual and ran away from home. She discovers that he is sick and she has to make the decision to go against her husbands one-sided beliefs and be with her son, or to abandon her son. It is a movie full of real life issues and it is very deep. It is a beautiful story about love and acceptance, about loss and regrets. Definately a bittersweet movie, that makes you look at things differently. It shows a different side of Bonnie Hunt and Kip Pardue, which I really enjoyed.

(*) (*) (*) (*) I gave it four stars.:) :)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup

sweetlady

06-11-2006, 11:38 AM

Kevin Kline plays talented and celebrated composer Cole Porter, who penned many hits, including "Anything Goes," "Night and Day" and the delightful "It's De-Lovely," which inspired the movie's title. As seen through the eyes of Porter himself, his life is told like one of his musicals, replete with drama, suspense and joy, at the center of which is his mercurial relationship with his wife, Linda (Ashley Judd).

Cast:
Kevin Kline Ashley Judd
Jonathan Pryce Angie Hill
Natalie Cole Elvis Costello
Sheryl Crow Alanis Morissette

(*) (*) Sheryl Crowe, Natalie Cole.......and others actually *performed* and sang in this film....oh yes, and Elvis Costello!

Reviews:

(~) De-Lovely is the story of the relationship of legendary songwriter Cole Porter and his wife, Linda. We find out early on in the movie that Cole likes the company of men as well as women, and even though he is smitten with Linda, he does not intend to change his life. At its heart, De-Lovely is a movie about the strength of relationships--can one partner really deal with the other's extra-relationship affairs? The rest of the movie is window dressing--told as a framestory stageplay of Cole Porter's life looking backward. We've seen this window dressing a lot recently -- Big Fish, The Notebook, and Moulin Rouge just to name a few. But here, it really works. The production design is marvelous and glamorous; the infusion of Cole Porter's library of songs and musicals is fun and awe-inspiring. And Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd give compelling and believeable performances. Strip away the window dressing, however, and there's not much to the heart of the movie. We really don't see how Judd's Linda changes from acquiescent to hesistant to hostile toward Cole's bisexual activity. Was she merely naive to think she could endure such a lifestyle, was she solely focused on Cole's career, or was there something in their lives that truly changed her perspective? And there are many other movies that more powerfully address this subject matter -- Pollock and The Passion of Ayn Rand for example. But here, the window dressing is so magical that you don't leave the theater feeling like the true questions of the movie were left unanswered; you leave singing a tune and touched at the story of the life of a great songwriter. Look for oscar nominations here.

(~) I was surprised at how much music they used in this film. If you miss musicals and love music--particularly the music of this gone-by age, this movie is for you. Don't watch it with anyone who is lukewarm on this genre--the film is long and the songs keep coming and anyone politely there "for you" will be sighing and checking his or her watch and lessening your enjoyment. I really liked this film but was very glad to be seeing it with another lover of musicals.

(*)Great point....I watched it alone and cried several times throughout.:'(

(~) This movie lives up to its title. Kevin Kline is Cole Porter and Ashley Judd his very tolerant wife, Linda. Well acted and directed. Lots of songs that all all interweave with what was going on in his life at the time. Some prodution numbers but not the Buzby Berkley kind. This was a facinating look at a very talented man who I knew nothing about. I love this era of music so I am definatly partial and I will buy the CD when it comes out. I liked hearing the conteporaory artists sing this music, as they were delightfully good. A real grown up picture--no car chases, blown up cities, or murders, just a good story well done and a nice way to spend some time.

(*)Amen to the above review!! I plan on buying the sountrack CD as well. (y) (8) (8) (y)

It's another delightfully sunny day and cool winds - I could stay here if the weather was like this even *half* of the time...:o :o Alas, days like today a rare.

What a (g) of a day. Off to a local park with Wyatt!

(k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-11-2006, 11:51 AM

http://www.usanetwork.com/series/the4400/

(*) (*) Deadwood at 9:00 for sure! Then again at midnight, USA Networks is running the two-hour Season 3 premiere of the 4400.

(y) Tomorrow night (Monday) at 9:00 p.m. EDT, TNT starts its second season of "The Closer".

Kyra Sedgwick rocks!

http://alt.tnt.tv/closer/ or http://www.tnt.tv/title/0,,612019,00.html

(*) (*) Finally, cable networks paying big $$ for episodics that run during the "dry" summer. I can't believe that each episode of Deadwood costs $4.5 Million.

......:'( and the series ends with two two-hour episodes in 2007 because HBO wants to cut costs and start another new series with Milch directing.:( :(

(o) (o) However, staying in the moment.......I am glad that there are three series that I really like all starting simultaneously AND in the hot, muggy Summer too.......and after a few-week break traveling - back to take two of my last three PhD courses July 10. :D :D

(o) (o) ...Where's Wyatt's leash? Let's go fofr a ride and walk in the park!

:) :) 's

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-11-2006, 11:57 AM

Dear God: Why do humans smell the flowers, but seldom, if ever, smell one
another?

Dear God: When we get to heaven, can we sit on your couch? Or is it still
the same old story?

Dear God: Why are there cars named after the jaguar, the cougar, the
mustang, the colt, the stingray, and the rabbit, but not ONE named for a
dog? How often do you see a cougar riding around? We do love a nice ride!
Would it be so ha rd to rename the "Chrysler Eagle" the " Chrysler Beagle"?

Dear God: If a dog barks his head off in the forest and no human hears
him, is he still a bad dog?

Dear God: We dogs can understand human verbal instructions, hand signals,
whistles, horns, clickers, beepers, scent ID's, electromagnetic energy
fields, and Frisbee flight paths. What do humans understand?

Dear God: More meatballs, less spaghetti, please.

Dear God: Are there mailmen in Heaven? If there are, will I have to
apologize?

Dear God: Let me give you a list of just some of the things I must
remember to be a good dog.

1. I will not eat the cats' food before they eat it or after they throw it
up.

2. I will not roll on dead seagulls, fish, crabs, etc., just because I
like the way they smell.

3. I will not munch on "leftovers" in the kitty litter box, although they
are tasty.

4. The diaper pail is not a cookie jar.

5. The sofa is not a 'face towel'. Neither are Mom and Dad's laps.

6. The garbage collector is not stealing our stuff.

7. My head does not belong in the refrigerator.

8. I will not bite the officer' s hand when he reaches in for Mom's
driver's license and registration.

9. I will not play tug-of-war with Dad's underwear when he's on the
toilet.

10. Sticking my nose into someone's crotch is an unacceptable way of
saying "hello".

11. I don't need to suddenly stand straight up when I'm under the coffee
table.

12. I must shake the rainwater out of my fur before entering the house -
not after.

13. I will not throw up in the car.

14. I will not come in from outside and immediately drag my butt.

15. I will not sit in the middle of the living room and lick my crotch
when we have company.

16. The cat is not a 'squeaky toy' so when I play with him and he makes
that noise, it's usually not a good thing.

And, finally, My last two questions .

Dear God: Why do humans only have 10 Commandments and dogs have 16?

P.S. Dear God: When I get to Heaven may I have my testicles back?

;) ;) 's

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-12-2006, 08:12 AM

by Linda Kohan

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

The Tao of Equus, which literally translates as "the way of the horse," explores the possibility that horses are highly evolved, spiritual beings who offer humans opportunities for healing and personal growth. Linda Kohanov is the owner of Epona Equestrian Services, an Arizona-based collective of trainers and counselors that explore the therapeutic potential of equestrian pursuits. Although she does discuss horse training and horse behavior, Kohanov is most interested in what horses can teach us. Moving beyond the realm of horse whispering, Kohanov studies how horses awaken intuition in humans while also mirroring our unspoken feelings and fears. At its core, this book reminds us to be mindful as we approach the horse-human relationship. Like human-to-human relationships, we have to do our own personal and spiritual work before we can expect to create a meaningful and cooperative interspecies connection. Kohanov is a steadfast writer who isn't shy about claiming a strong feminine approach, showing how mythology and history are filled with examples of powerful woman-horse connections. She also has the courage to reveal her paranormal experiences with these intensely emotional and intuitive animals--stories that may sound familiar to anyone who has ever loved and dreamed of horses. --Gail Hudson

From Publishers Weekly

A freelance writer and founder of an equestrian therapy center, Kohanov relates the strange dreams, paranormal events and personal epiphanies that led her to believe that she was being visited not by just any run-of-the-mill poltergeist, but by a herd of ghost horses that wanted her to share their wisdom. It's a fantastic story, she admits, writing, "I wouldn't be surprised if some people use elements of what I divulge in this book to try to discredit anything else I have to say about the potential of the horse-human relationship." In a straightforward manner, Kohanov describes the strange events as she remembers them and explores their implications for equine-based therapy; using anecdotes from her experience as a facilitator of horse-centered therapy, she offers a compelling look at what these animals can do for traumatized and desperately unhappy humans. She also examines the role of horses in mythology and ancient writings and the relationships between horses and people. Her research is comprehensive, shedding new light on such familiar terms as "nightmare" and on well-known stories like the myth of Medusa (from whose blood the winged horse Pegasus sprung). Kohanov's tale will be greeted with skepticism by many readers, but her sure writing should turn a few of them into believers.

(*) (*) (l) (l) :) Wyatt Webb also "does" equine-based therapy in AZ. From what I have heard, the week or two-week sessions create miracles.(a) (a) I've read his book, "It's not about the horse" and really enjoyed it.(y)

(f) (f) Have a lovely week!

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-12-2006, 08:16 AM

1. Christopher Walken Cowbell Soundboard (HILARIOUS!)

http://c-eye.net/flash/WalkenCowbellSB.html

2. Truly Young FrankenSteve (I about fell outta my chair!)

http://www.videosift.com/siftoff/story.php?id=2577

3. Play-Doh Cologne:

http://www.perpetualkid.com/index.asp

;) :)

SL & WTBP (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-13-2006, 04:02 PM

June 7, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Damien, Demons and Dubya

By MAUREEN DOWD

washington

As I write this on 6-6-06, with a new Damien demonically wheeling through movie theaters trying to kill his mom in a remake of "The Omen," let us now speak of famous bogeymen.

The Bushes have always been good at using bogeymen to their political advantage.

Lee Atwater, the devilish strategist for Bush Senior, turned an obscure criminal named Willie Horton into the Candyman in 1988, whipping up the fear that if Michael Dukakis were elected, hordes of swarthy skels would be freed on weekend parole and swarm into your neighborhood.

W.'s supporters beat back the McCain threat in the 2000 South Carolina primary by spreading gossip that the Arizona senator had fathered a black baby — a creepy distortion of the fact that he and his wife had adopted a little girl from Bangladesh.

Karl Rove, an Atwater acolyte, had a closetful of bogeymen whisking W. past the finish line in 2004: terrorists who might strike again, gays who wanted to get hitched, stem cell research, Darwin, Dan Rather, and a Swift-boated John Kerry.

W. prefers tactical bêtes noires to real ones. (Hillary followed his lead by joining conservatives to support a constitutional ban on flag burning.)

The president had a truly terrifying bogeyman in Osama but instead conjured up a fake nuclear villain in Saddam. He has played down bin Laden, first diverting the resources needed to capture him and now diverting the money needed to protect against his likely targets, letting homeland security funds be moved from New York and Washington. (Jon Stewart has said that Omaha got a lot of homeland security money because it was under threat by the "renowned Midwestern terrorist Omaha bin Laden.")

As Mike Crowley of The New Republic notes, the F.B.I. does not even mention 9/11 in its "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" profile of Osama. The poster, updated in November 2001, says bin Laden is wanted in the bombings of the United States Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 200 in 1998, and "is a suspect in other terrorist attacks." No word of the nearly 3,000 killed on Sept. 11.

Fearing that their monopoly on Washington power could be coming to an end, with voters grumpy at Republicans over Iraq, gas prices, Medicare, Social Security, corruption, wild spending and general incompetence, Bush strategists have revived the gay marriage Frankenstein to scare the base into turning out for midterms. (That bride of Frankenstein had better be female.)

Same-sex marriage is far less spooky than the 17 severed heads recently found in a village northeast of Baghdad, or the terror suspect accused of conspiring to behead the Canadian prime minister.

W. ignored the gay marriage issue in the 19 months after he used it to help him stay in the White House. To reprise it now, knowing it has no chance of passing, is so transparent that surely even the most blinkered "values" voters see through it.

When pollsters ask Americans their top priorities, gay marriage does not leap onto the list. In a new ABC News poll, only four in 10 surveyed were in favor of rewriting the Constitution.

Even as W. gave a speech here promoting a constitutional amendment designed to demonize and discriminate against a group of Americans who have done nothing wrong, his heart did not seem in it. A Democratic strategist noted on CNN that the president looked as cowed as "a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs."

Wrestling with Iraq and Iran have worn down W., and he knows, as we do, that a couple of middle-aged guys who want to tie the knot in Provincetown is not the worst threat America faces.

With our marines needing refresher courses in "core values" and with Dick Cheney promoting values like torture, government snooping and pre-emptive war, it rings hollow to opportunistically proselytize on family values. (Mary Cheney, the gay daughter of the vice president, told interviewers recently that her father opposed the marriage amendment.)

As a Times reader who sometimes e-mails me put it: "The 'values' voters turn out to be opinion voters. They believe that God hates homosexuals, that superstition trumps science every time, that all those foreigners ought to be sent back where they came from, and that all government programs are wasteful and immoral, except, of course, for the government programs which benefit them. Those are opinions, not values, and willfully ignorant opinions at that."

I know Republicans are desperate. But does it make sense to use gay love to hatemonger here when we have so much real hate coming at us from abroad?

(*) (*) I agree! Repubs ARE desperate!:| :| And will *do* anything including erode the Constitution of these United States.:o :o Grrrrr.

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-13-2006, 04:05 PM

June 10, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Bloggers Double Down

By MAUREEN DOWD

Las Vegas

If I had to be relegated to the Dustbin of History, I'm glad it was in Vegas.

I, Old Media, came here to attend a New Media convention of progressive political bloggers aiming for a technological revolution that would dispatch mainstream media to the tumbrels. It was the journalistic equivalent of mingling with your own pod replicant in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

"Bloggers meet mainstream media," crowed one young man, as he had a friend take a picture of us together at the Riviera Hotel. His friend chimed in: "Where the rubber meets the road."

Old media and new circled each other "like kids at a seventh-grade dance," said Jennifer Palmieri, a Democratic operative.

Markos Moulitsas, the 34-year-old provocateur from Berkeley who runs America's most popular and influential political blog, Daily Kos, said in a keynote speech that "the old media are no longer the gatekeepers" and that "Republicans have failed us because they can't govern; Democrats have failed us because they can't get elected."

Despite being labeled failures, Democratic presidential hopefuls and lesser pols lined up to kiss the Polo-sneaker-clad feet of Mr. Moulitsas and his fellow Blogfather, Jerome Armstrong. Hillary was not there. Triangulation makes you a troll, in the argot of this crowd. "Oh my God," Mr. Moulitsas said when asked about her. "No way!"

But Mark Warner, Wes Clark and Jack Carter — Jimmy Carter's son, who is running for the Senate in Nevada — are holding blog bashes. Tom Vilsack, Barbara Boxer and Howard Dean were there. Bill Richardson, wearing a white T-shirt under a blue jacket, jeans and silver jewelry, flew in for a breakfast with the Kossacks in a Riviera skybox.

"We should be the party of space," the governor of New Mexico said, trying to sound futuristic. "I'm for space." Told that Mark Warner was there, Mr. Richardson said, smiling a bit: "Warner, is he here? I don't care."

John Laesch, who is running to unseat Denny Hastert in Illinois, was ubiquitous, even kneeling before one blogger in the hall, seeking a "Netroots" endorsement.

Technology has enabled the not-meek to inherit the earth, and Democrats and others who refuse to drink the cyber-Kool-Aid will, Mr. Moulitsas said, go into the old "dustbin of history."

The fast-talking former Army artillery scout with the boyish demeanor and dark brown buggy eyes is no one to take lightly. Some may think the Internet messiah who put Mr. Dean on the map in 2003 is "a fame hound, a loudmouthed nerd at the back of the room," as The Washington Monthly wrote. But others, including adoring conventioneers who called the scene at the debut YearlyKos gathering "magic" and "a rock concert," see him the way Ana Marie Cox, née Wonkette, described him this week in Time.com: "He's the left's own Kurt Cobain and Che Guevara rolled into one."

I tracked down the cult leader, wading through a sea of Kossacks, who were sitting on the floor in the hall with their laptops or at tables where they blogged, BlackBerried, texted and cellphoned — sometimes contacting someone only a few feet away. They were paler and more earnest than your typical Vegas visitors, but the mood was like a masquerade. This was the first time many of the bloggers had met, and they delighted in discovering whether their online companions were, as one woman told me, male, female, black, white, old, young or "in a wheelchair."

Mr. Moulitsas assured me he didn't see himself as a journalist, only a Democratic activist. "I don't plan on doing any original reporting — screw that. I need people like you," he said, agreeing that since he still often had to pivot off the reporting of the inadequate mainstream media to form his inflammatory opinions, our relationship was, by necessity, "symbiotic."

As I wandered around workshops, I began to wonder if the outsiders just wanted to get in. One was devoted to training bloggers, who had heretofore not given much thought to grooming and glossy presentation, on how to be TV pundits and avoid the stereotype of nutty radical kids.

Mr. Moulitsas said he had a media coach who taught him how to stand, dress, speak, breathe and even get up from his chair. Another workshop coached Kossacks on how to talk back to Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. "One of my favorite points," the workshop leader said, "is that the French were right."

Even as Old Media is cowed by New Media, New Media is trying to become, rather than upend, Old Media. Ms. Cox has left her Wonkette gig to be a novelist and Time essayist. Mr. Moulitsas and Mr. Armstrong wrote a book called "Crashing the Gate," and hit "Meet the Press" and the book tour circuit. Mr. Armstrong left his liberal blog to become a senior adviser to Mr. Warner. What could be more mainstream than that?

Were the revolutionaries simply eager to be co-opted? Mr. Moulitsas grinned. "Traditionally it was hard to get your job," he said. "Now regular people can score your job."

Fine. I'll be at the Cleopatra slot machine pondering a career in blogging, which will set me up to get back into mainstream media someday.

(*) (*) Maureen's last sentence just slayed me....LMAO!!! What an incisive-writer!! I read recently that one of the top five jobs that WILL NOT be around in 5 years is a blogger. The other is a car mechanic. Geez, with my lack of automotive skills, that was not good news.

Off to the park for an early evening walk in a little while.......today was da worst.........:s

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-13-2006, 04:07 PM

June 12, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Those Pesky Voters

By BOB HERBERT

I remember fielding telephone calls on Election Day 2004 from friends and colleagues anxious to talk about the exit polls, which seemed to show that John Kerry was beating George W. Bush and would be the next president.

As the afternoon faded into evening, reports started coming in that the Bush camp was dispirited, maybe even despondent, and that the Kerry crowd was set to celebrate. (In an article in the current issue of Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes, "In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair went to bed contemplating his relationship with President-elect Kerry.")

I was skeptical.

The election was bound to be close, and I knew that Kerry couldn't win Florida. I had been monitoring the efforts to suppress Democratic votes there and had reported on the thuggish practice (by the Jeb Bush administration) of sending armed state police officers into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando to "investigate" allegations of voter fraud.

As far as I was concerned, Florida was safe for the G.O.P. That left Ohio.

Republicans, and even a surprising number of Democrats, have been anxious to leave the 2004 Ohio election debacle behind. But Mr. Kennedy, in his long, heavily footnoted article ("Was the 2004 Election Stolen?"), leaves no doubt that the democratic process was trampled and left for dead in the Buckeye State. Mr. Kerry almost certainly would have won Ohio if all of his votes had been counted, and if all of the eligible voters who tried to vote for him had been allowed to cast their ballots.

Mr. Kennedy's article echoed and expanded upon an article in Harper's ("None Dare Call It Stolen," by Mark Crispin Miller) that ran last summer. Both articles documented ugly, aggressive and frequently unconscionable efforts by G.O.P. stalwarts to disenfranchise Democrats in Ohio, especially those in urban and heavily black areas.

The point man for these efforts was the Ohio secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who was both the chief election official in the state and co-chairman of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio — just as Katherine Harris was the chief election official and co-chairwoman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida in 2000.

No one has been able to prove that the election in Ohio was hijacked. But whenever it is closely scrutinized, the range of problems and dirty tricks that come to light is shocking. What's not shocking, of course, is that every glitch and every foul-up in Ohio, every arbitrary new rule and regulation, somehow favored Mr. Bush.

For example, the shortages of voting machines and the long lines with waits of seven hours or more occurred mostly in urban areas and discouraged untold numbers of mostly Kerry voters.

Walter Mebane Jr., a professor of government at Cornell University, did a statistical analysis of the vote in Franklin County, which includes the city of Columbus. He told Mr. Kennedy, "The allocation of voting machines in Franklin County was clearly biased against voters in precincts with high proportions of African-Americans."

Mr. Mebane told me that he compared the distribution of voting machines in Ohio's 2004 presidential election with the distribution of machines for a primary election held the previous spring. For the primary, he said, "There was no sign of racial bias in the distribution of the machines." But for the general election in November, "there was substantial bias, with fewer voting machines per voter in areas that were heavily African-American."

Mr. Mebane said he was unable to determine whether the machines were "intentionally" allocated "to create these biases."

Mr. Kennedy noted that this was just one of an endless sequence of difficulties confronting Democratic voters that stretched from the registration process to the post-election recount. Statistical analyses — not just of the distribution of voting machines, but of wildly anomalous voting patterns — have left nonpartisan experts shaking their heads.

The lesson out of Ohio (and Florida before it) is that the integrity of the election process needs to be more fiercely defended in the face of outrageous Republican assaults. Democrats, the media and ordinary voters need to fight back.

The right to vote is supposed to mean something in the United States. The idea of going to war overseas in the name of the democratic process while making a mockery of that process here at home is just too ludicrous.

(*) (*) I was SO SHOCKED back in 2004, about Ohio (when Kerry lost by 3 million votes) and now it seems the voting was rigged by Bush cronies of course. Why am I not shocked?:| :| :| ;) ;)

(k) (k) ,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)

sweetlady

06-13-2006, 04:09 PM

June 13, 2006

Dogs and Their Fine Noses Find New Career Paths

By JENNIFER 8. LEE

A year ago, Jada, a frisky black mutt, was living in a Florida pound, her days numbered. Today she commands hundreds of dollars an hour at some of Manhattan's most exclusive hotels and apartment buildings. Her fate turned on her newly gained ability to sniff out something reviled in New York these days: bedbugs.

Last month, the Motion Picture Association of America started using two dogs, Lucky and Flo, to sniff out DVD's in the cargo area of Heathrow Airport in London, a major transit point for pirated DVD's. "First we had Lassie, then Rin Tin Tin and now Lucky and Flo," said Dan Glickman, the president of the association.

Dogs have long been partners in law enforcement's searches for narcotics, explosives and people (both dead and alive). But now their keen noses are being put to use in a wider variety of areas, like medicine, environmental protection and anti-piracy efforts. The number of dogs with the new, specialized skills remains but a fraction of the number trained for more traditional law enforcement uses.

Still, dogs are entering new career paths, learning to sniff out mercury in Minnesota schools, invasive weeds in Montana, cancer in people — even cows in heat.

"The dogs do better than bulls," said Lawrence J. Myers, a professor of veterinary science at Auburn University who wanted to increase the success rate of impregnation attempts, a pressing demand in the dairy industry. Dr. Myers, a leading expert on dogs' sense of smell, added that because dogs "have no innate interest in cows in heat," it takes repetitive training to teach them how to know when the cows are ready. (The bulls do not benefit from the dogs' work. Dairy cows are usually artificially inseminated.)

Dogs' sniffing prowess, well known for ages, lends itself to any number of needs. "Cocaine or peanut butter: whatever you want to find, we can train a dog to find it," said Bill Whitstine, Jada's original trainer and the founder of the Florida Canine Academy in Safety Harbor, Fla.

Engineers are still years away from creating instruments as sensitive or as flexible as a dog's nose. Until then, Mother Nature remains the master engineer. "You can train a dog for anything that has a unique or mostly unique odor," Dr. Myers said. In the case of DVD's, the smell that Lucky and Flo have been trained to detect is polycarbonate plastic. In the case of cancer, scientists believe that dogs may be picking up biological compounds, like alkanes and benzene derivatives, that are not found in healthy tissue.

The cancer detection research is in a preliminary stage, but some early tests with a variety of cancers like lung and bladder show a success rate better than conventional tests'.

Because dogs have 20 to 40 times the number of nasal receptor cells that humans do, they can detect the tiniest levels of odors, even a few parts per billion, Dr. Myers said. In addition, the dogs' nasal anatomy is very effective at sampling air, so much so that researchers are studying whether they can adapt it for a mechanical detector.

To be sure, dogs are but one animal with an extremely acute sense of smell (think European pigs and truffles), but being man's best friend helps with employment opportunities.

"I don't think you could ever get a police officer to get a pig around a car for a narcotics search," said David Latimer, a dog trainer in Birmingham, Ala., who has taught a dog to sniff out cellphones, part of an effort to thwart terrorists who plan to use them to detonate bombs. The dog has not been put to use in the field, however.

The training process is similar for almost all odors. For months, the dogs are given multiple items in succession to smell. When they come to the target odor — bedbugs or mold, for example — they get a reward. Eventually they associate the odor with the reward.

"All animals strive for food, sex and praise," Mr. Whitstine said. "We can't give them the middle one, but we can give them the food and praise." The more odors a dog is being asked to pick out, the longer the training. Mold dogs, for example, are taught to detect about 18 toxic molds, some of which cause allergies.

The training has to continue even after the dogs start working, so they remain sharp. Every day, Jada gets a refresher course from her owner, Carl Massicott, who runs Advanced K9 Detectives in Milford, Conn. To conduct the retraining, he built a contraption out of aluminum bars, a lazy susan and plastic containers. He spins the wheel and says, "Jada! Seek! Seek!"

Jada sniffed around the containers — one containing bedbug carcasses and the others containing decoy materials like carpet and plaster. When she got to the one with the dead bedbugs, she stopped. Then she tapped the container with her paw. "Good girl!" Mr. Massicott said, giving her a snack out of his waist pack.

He also uses live bedbugs for the retraining, which troubles his wife. Once, one escaped. "We weren't going to bed until we found it," Mr. Massicott said. Jada tracked the wayward bedbug down.

Jada needs only two minutes to check a room that can take a human up to half an hour to inspect. She has rooted out clusters of bedbugs in $500-a-night hotel rooms, elegant Park Avenue co-op buildings and Queens low-rise rentals. She has found bedbugs behind radiators and in cracks in the wall.

Many dogs who end up as career sniffers are rescued from shelters or pounds, just as Jada was, because the most important trait for them is not pedigree but personality. Trainers look for dogs that are eager and enjoy games. A common test is to see if they react enthusiastically to a tennis ball.

"Some dogs are too smart," said Alice Whitelaw, who works for a nonprofit conservation group in Montana and uses dogs to track wild animal excrement for biological surveying. "They're like, 'I don't need this. I could be lying down all day.' "

There are other limitations, since dogs are not machines. Jada can look for bedbugs only six hours a day before her accuracy declines. Dogs get tired. They are temperamental. They make mistakes in trying to please their handlers. In fact, overly high expectations helped fuel a boom and bust in termite-sniffing dogs in the 1980's. "We realize their fallibility," said Mr. Latimer, the trainer from Birmingham who is also training bedbug dogs. "I think that has caused them to gain in popularity and, quite frankly, in credibility."

Also, using sniffing dogs makes economic sense only when there is sufficient demand, like the recent surge in bedbugs in New York City.

As for sensing cows in heat, Dr. Myers sighed. "There is economic interest, but not enough to sustain it."

(*) (*) I loved this one!(l) (l)

(k) (k) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer Pup (l) (&) (l)