Terminated: Voters Say No to Arnold's Initiatives

Poor Arnold. Should have stuck to being a barbarian.

"SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Arnold Schwarzenegger picked the fight and emerged badly bloodied.

The special election he called cost 20 percent of the California governor's popularity and $300 million in campaign spending, including $7 million of his personal fortune.

At the end of Tuesday's exercise in direct democracy, the Republican emerged battered a year before he would be up for reelection in the generally Democratic state, with all eight initiatives on his ballot soundly defeated.

"This is the most significant 'no' vote in modern political California history, and it ought to cause serious reflection by the governor," Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said.

"The election results should send a strong message that the voters are tired of having issues that should be solved by their elected representatives placed before them on the ballot," she said.

The Austrian-born actor-turned-politician called the special election to show the Democrat-dominated state legislature that he could turn to the people and win if Sacramento did not bend to his will. He lost that bet.

Schwarzenegger's battle revolved around the budget, union dues, teacher tenure and legislative districting. Even some supporters wondered aloud whether those issues represented the most pressing problems facing the most populous U.S. state.

"This was about a bunch of garbage that nobody cared about," said Tony Quinn, co-editor of the California Target Book, which tracks state campaigns. "His problem was that he put all his prestige on the line for these measures that were arcane and in many cases poorly drafted."

- Adam Tanner, Reuters.

Penguins Explained: Flightless Brids Product of Microevolution

"The breakup of giant icebergs may have forced minor evolutionary changes in penguins over the past 6,000 years, a new study suggests.

The Antarctic iceberg chunks, which break off the continent now and then, are thought to have blocked the swim paths of Adelie penguins returning home to their colonies. Some of the penguins were forced to become immigrants in other colonies, where they established new homes and interbred with the locals.

As a result, genetic changes that might otherwise have remained isolated became widespread among the different colonies. The result is what scientist call microevolution.

Microevolution involves small-scale genetic changes in a species over time. The classic example is a color change undergone by British pepper moths in response to changing levels of air pollution. The acquisition of antibiotic resistance by bacteria and the trend towards tusk-less elephants in Africa are also examples of microevolution at work.

Because it is so well documented, even people who don't believe that evolution can lead to the creation of new species accept that microevolution occurs.

Most microevolution studies involve change over very short time periods, on the order of decades or a few hundred years. The detection of microevolutionary changes over longer time periods has been difficult because it requires that ancient DNA deposits be found together with samples from modern populations of the same species.

Adelie penguins may be the ideal candidates for such research. The penguins often live, breed and die in the same colonies where they were born and where their ancestors before them lived. And the remains of ancestor birds are well preserved in distinct layers of the frigid terrain, making fossil dating relatively easy."

- From Ker Than, LiveScience.com

They Call It Science: We Better Go Warn the Whales...

"Japan's whaling fleet has set sail for Antarctic waters where it will make its biggest catch in 20 years. The boats will aim to catch nearly 1,000 whales over the coming months. A global moratorium on commercial whaling has been in place since the 1980s, but Japan describes its programme as "scientific."

The hunting is condemned by most conservation groups on the grounds that it is inhumane, unnecessary and may harm fragile wildlife populations. The fleet sailed on Tuesday from Shimonoseki port for the first year of a "research" programme called JARPA-2. It envisages catching up to 935 minke whales and 10 fin whales during the southern hemisphere summer to "...monitor the Antarctic ecosystem, model competition among whale species... elucidate temporal and spatial changes in stock structure and improve the management procedure for the Antarctic minke whale stocks."

JARPA-2 replaces the JARPA-1 programme which took 440 Antarctic minkes each season. In two years' time JARPA-2 will expand to include humpbacks, the favoured species for whale watchers. Critics say this is commercial whaling in disguise, with meat obtained from the hunts sold for food in restaurants and schools. Scientific objectives can be met through non-lethal methods, they say.

"Japan's announcement that it intends to kill more than twice as many minke whales and hunt two new species over the coming years provoked international outrage earlier this year," commented Philippa Brakes, a scientist with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

"The Japanese whalers know that the eyes of the world are upon them with an intensity that they have not experienced since the moratorium," she told the BBC News website."

- Richard Black, BBC News.

Science Says Peyote Safe! Let's Eat Cactus!

I don't known anyone who has tried this. It may be safe, but I am still afraid. It is after all a spirit cactus.

"In the first study of its kind, researchers have found that peyote -- for now, the only legal hallucinogenic drug in the United States -- doesn't rob regular users of brain power over time. While the findings don't directly indicate anything about the safety of psychedelic drugs like LSD and mushrooms, they do suggest that at least one hallucinogen is OK to use for months or even years.

"We really weren't able to find any (mental) deficits," said Dr. John Halpern, associate director of substance abuse research at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and co-author of the study, released today in the Nov. 4 issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry. Hallucinogenic drugs have long fascinated researchers, who are now studying whether they hold the potential to treat mental illnesses like depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

But little is known about the long-term effects of hallucinogenic use. Part of the problem is that many users -- such as LSD aficionados -- take a variety of other drugs, so it's hard to tease out the specific effects of psychedelic drugs.

Enter peyote, currently the only hallucinogenic drug legally allowed for use outside research labs (although that may change). Compared with LSD and mushrooms, peyote is a bit obscure, with its use -- at least legally -- limited to the sacramental rites of the Native American Church, which has as many as 300,000 members. Many peyote users don't take other drugs, making them ideal subjects for hallucinogenic research.

Peyote comes from the crowns of a cactus that grows in northern Mexico and parts of Texas. Harvesters cut off the crown, dry it and sell it in "buttons," Halpern said. Generally, users eat the buttons whole or grind them up into a powder that can be mixed into food or brewed into a tea.

When enough peyote is eaten, users enter a hallucinogenic state thanks to its active ingredient, the chemical mescaline. Halpern and colleagues recruited three groups of Navajos -- 61 members of the Native American Church who regularly ate peyote, 36 alcoholics who have been dry for at least two months and 79 people who reported little or no use of alcohol or drugs. The researchers then gave mental-health and cognitive tests to the subjects."

- Randy Dotinga, Wired.

Scotter Libby's Erotic Novel: Kinky and Depraved

Is it just me or do all these family values people eventually end up being exposed as perverts?

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - A steamy novel by Lewis "Scooter" Libby has become a hot item now that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff is under indictment.

An inscribed copy of "The Apprentice: A Novel," which Libby wrote in 1996 when he was a relative unknown outside Washington, was on sale on online bookseller Amazon.com on Monday for $2,400. Unsigned hardcover copies were going for $700.

Now out of print, the novel tells the story of an innkeeper apprentice in a bizarre coming-of-age story set in Japan in 1903. It is littered with edgy sexual material and strong language.

"Wow, who would have thought that clean living, family values man Scooter Libby was capable of writing such filth," said one reviewer on Amazon. Another Amazon reviewer noted its "lavish dollops of voyeurism, bestiality, pedophilia and corpse robbery."

Libby was charged last month with perjury in a special prosecutor's probe into how a CIA operative's identity was leaked to journalists. Libby's writing skills also happened to be displayed in a widely published letter to reporter Judith Miller of The New York Times that showed a flair for literary allusion and ambiguity.

"Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them," he wrote to Miller as she sat in jail earlier this year for refusing to reveal Libby's identity as a source."

-From Reuters, Yahoo! News.

Chinese Try to Buy the Moon

"Beijing industrial and commercial authorities have suspended the license of a company claiming to sell land on the moon for engagement in speculation and profiteering.

The Beijing Lunar Village Aeronautics Science and Technology Co., Ltd. with domestic financing, was registered on September 5 but has now stopped operation, said a source with the Chaoyang District Branch of the Beijing Municipal Administration for Industry and Commerce over the weekend.

The so-called Lunar Embassy in China claimed that one can purchase an acre on the moon for 298 yuan (37 US dollars) through the company. The company started operation on October 19.

The Lunar Embassy issued customers a "certificate" that ensured property ownership including rights to use the land and minerals up to three kilometers underground, Li Jie, chief executive officer of the company was quoted as saying by earlier reports.

A Chaoyang District branch official said that according to state regulations, all activities which are in violation of state laws and regulations, and disturb social and economic order are regarded to be engaged in speculation and profiteering."

-From The Chinal Daily.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions up by 52% by 2030

"Global greenhouse gas emissions will rise by 52% by 2030, unless the world takes action to reduce energy consumption, a study has warned. The prediction comes from the latest annual World Energy Outlook report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). It says that under current consumption trends, energy demand will also rise by more than 50% over the next 25 years.

The IEA adds that oil prices will "substantially" rise unless there is extra investment in oil facilities. It says the world has seen "years of under-investment" in both oil production and the refinery sector.The organisation estimates that the global oil industry now needs to invest $20.3 trillion (£12 trillion) in fresh facilities by 2030, or else the wider global economy could suffer.

"These projected trends have important implications and lead to a future that is not sustainable," said IEA chief Claude Mandil.

"We must change these outcomes and get the planet onto a sustainable energy path."

The IEA's warning comes at a time when the Kyoto climate change agreement calls on developed nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions to 5% below 1990 levels by 2008-12. It also cautions that oil producers need to double annual investments in their oil fields or else see another £13 a barrel on the projected price of oil over the next 25 years."

- From BBC News.

Cheerleaders Arrested for Bathroom Love Making

I thought this kind of thing only happened in skin flicks. Guess I need to go out more.

"TAMPA, Fla. - Two Carolina Panthers cheerleaders were charged after their arrest at a bar where witnesses told police the women had sex in a restroom. Renee Thomas, 20, of Pittsboro, N.C., and Angela Keathley, 26, of Belmont, N.C., were taken to Hillsborough County Jail early Sunday.

Witnesses said the women were having sex in a stall with each other, angering patrons waiting in line to get into the restroom at the club in the Channelside district.

Thomas was charged with battery Sunday after allegedly striking a bar patron when she was leaving the restroom, then landed in even more trouble after police said she gave officers a driver's license belonging to another Panthers cheerleader who was not in Tampa.

Thomas, who made the trip to Florida for Sunday's game between the Panthers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was released from jail on $500 bail before police learned she was not the person she claimed to be.

Providing police with a false name is a misdemeanor. However, Thomas was charged Monday with giving a false name and causing harm to another — a third-degree felony punishable by probation or a jail term of 1 to 5 years, said police spokeswoman Laura McElroy.

Meanwhile, detectives are trying to determine how Thomas gained possession of the driver's license of the third cheerleader.

Keathley, charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, was released on $750 bail about an hour before the Panthers played the Bucs at Raymond James Stadium. The cheerleaders were not in town to perform at the game."

- AP, Yahoo! News.

Cardinal Poupard Gives Props to Charley D. and Evolution.

It is very refreshing to hear religious leaders speak intelligently. Kudos to Cardinal Poupard.

"Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the Genesis description of how God created the universe and Darwin's theory of evolution were "perfectly compatible" if the Bible were read correctly.

His statement was a clear attack on creationist campaigners in the US, who see evolution and the Genesis account as mutually exclusive.

"The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," he said at a Vatican press conference. He said the real message in Genesis was that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator".

This idea was part of theology, Cardinal Poupard emphasised, while the precise details of how creation and the development of the species came about belonged to a different realm - science. Cardinal Poupard said that it was important for Catholic believers to know how science saw things so as to "understand things better."

His statements were interpreted in Italy as a rejection of the "intelligent design" view, which says the universe is so complex that some higher being must have designed every detail."

-By Martin Penner, News.com.au.

Germany's Nutxwerk Ltd. Becomes World's First Grump Free Workplace

"German IT outfit Nutzwerk Ltd has come up with the perfect solution to whining in the workplace - it's made cheerfulness a contractual obligation. What's more, Manager Thomas Kuwatsch has declared that those who don't measure up to the prescribed level of jollity in the morning should stay at home until they cheer up, Ananova reports.

All well and good, but if the powers that be tried that at Vulture Central, the office would resemble a Texas ghost town with the ocassional bit of tumbleweed blowing through as obstreperous Reg hacks ranted and raved around their kitchen tables.

Nutwerk reckons it's a runner, though, and says the plan was prompted by a female employee who banged on so much about just about everything that other staff began to complain about her complaining. Herr Kuwatsch explained: "We made the ban on moaning and grumpiness at work official after one female employee refused to subscribe to the company's philosophy of always smiling. Mood is an important factor in productivity and everyone here works hard and is happy."

Employee Kathleen Sochor added, presumably with a huge fixed smile on her face in the style of a sychronized swimmer: "It's great that whinging is not allowed. If one person is grumpy it makes everyone else feel bad and ruins what could be a good day."

However, Lawyer Marion von Sahr cautioned: "In principle, employers and employees can contractually agree on anything if both sides are happy and that includes banning whinging. But I am not sure if being a sourpuss is enough reason to fire somebody."

-Lester Haines, The Register (UK).

Kanasi Huguai: China's Official Lake Monster

"LAKE KANASI, China - The moon is barely a crescent in the sky as dusk darkens the milky green surface of Lake Kanasi.

Four people huddle on the edge of a floating wooden dock, eyes scanning this mountain lake near China's remote northwestern frontier with Central Asia. Small waves lap at their shoes.

In a soft voice, Yuan Guoying recounts his two sightings of the creatures. The first over there, from a cliff, Yuan says. Then again, 19 years later.

From the group comes a squeal as tiny, silver fish dart at hunks of bread they have dropped in.

"Look! There are so many of them!" says one girl. "But where's the lake monster?"

Another 40 minutes pass. A chill breeze kicks up.

Yuan is unfazed.

"We can wait all night," he says. "Let's see if this is our fate."

They have come by the tens of thousands over the years — skeptical scientists, curious tourists — answering the lure of the mysterious "Kanasi Huguai," China's very own version of the Loch Ness monster."

Audra Ang, Associated Press.

Welcome to Wal-Mart World!

"WASHINGTON - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. lowers consumer costs and adds jobs but has also led to a decline in wages and an increase in the number of people relying on government aid for health care, studies released on Friday show.

At a conference sponsored by Wal-Mart to examine its impact on the U.S. economy, researchers found that the world's biggest retailer accounted for some 210,000 net jobs last year while driving nominal wages down 2.2 percent.

The world's biggest retailer also lowered consumer prices by 3.1 percent, and real disposable income was 0.9 percent higher than it would have been in a world without Wal-Mart, researchers at Global Insight concluded.

The one-day event comes as rapidly expanding Wal-Mart tries to counter increasingly vocal critics who contend that the retailer drives competitors out of business and pays poverty-level wages that push employees to seek government aid.

Wal-Mart, which stressed that it made no attempt to influence the studies, gave Global Insight access to its wage data from October 2004 and sales and employment information dating back to the mid-1980s.

In addition to that study, the research firm also vetted papers from other researchers and accepted nine, some of which were far more critical. One found that Wal-Mart stores increase Medicaid spending, while another showed that the retailer actually reduced employment in the retail sector."

-Emily Kaiser, Reutors.

Goodbye Vanilla Coke. Hello Black Cherry Vanilla Coke.

I don't know how to feel about this. On one hand I am definitely mad about no more Vanilla Coke, but Black Cherry Vanilla Coke sounds like the nectar of the gods.

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - Coca-Cola Co., the world's largest soft drink maker, said on Friday it would phase out its Vanilla Coke, Vanilla Diet Coke and Diet Coke With Lemon beverages in the United States by end of this year.

The announcement came a day after Coca-Cola said it would phase out Vanilla Coke and Vanilla Diet Coke in the United Kingdom early next year. The company said sales have declined.

Coca-Cola added that it plans to introduce Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke and Black Cherry Vanilla Coke in the United States in January 2006.

The company said Vanilla Coke, which was introduced in the United States in 2002 and Diet Vanilla Coke in 2003, could return sometime in the future. Details about whether Diet Coke With Lemon, which made its U.S. entry in 2001, would be brought back were not available.

"I don't know if we have ever taken out a flavor and brought it back to the market, but the landscape continues to change and we want to be as flexible as possible to adapt to the changing landscape," said Scott Williamson, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola."

- Anupama Chandrasekaran, Reuters.

Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk

Interested in turning your internet addiction into monies? Check out Amazon's New Project: Mechanical Turk.

" What is a HIT?

HIT stands for Human Intelligence Task. These are tasks that people are willing to pay you to complete. For example a HIT might ask: "Is there a pizza parlour in this photograph?" Typically these tasks are extraordinarily difficult for computers, but simple for humans to answer.

How do I get paid?

You are paid when your answer is approved by the person that listed the HIT. The money you earn is deposited into your Amazon.com account, where you can turn it into cash at any time by transferring it to your personal checking account."

-From Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

The name Mechanical Turck is a refrence to a famous 18th century hoax (see picture). Want to learn more?

Thus Spoke Saturn! Very Creepy!

"Saturn is a source of intense radio emissions, which have been monitored by the Cassini spacecraft. The radio waves are closely related to the auroras near the poles of the planet. These auroras are similar to Earth's northern and southern lights. This is an audio file of radio emissions from Saturn.

The Cassini spacecraft began detecting these radio emissions in April 2002, when Cassini was 374 million kilometers (234 million miles) from the planet, using the Cassini radio and plasma wave science instrument.

The radio and plasma wave instrument has now provided the first high resolution observations of these emissions, showing an amazing array of variations in frequency and time. The complex radio spectrum with rising and falling tones, is very similar to Earth's auroral radio emissions. These structures indicate that there are numerous small radio sources moving along magnetic field lines threading the auroral region.

Time on this recording has been compressed, so that 73 seconds corresponds to 27 minutes. Since the frequencies of these emissions are well above the audio frequency range, we have shifted them downward by a factor of 44.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radio and plasma wave science team is based at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the instrument team's home page, http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/cassini/ ."

Click here to play sounds of Saturn's radio emissions, which have changes in frequency (718 Kb Wave Sound).

- From NASA.

Is Mr. Britney Gonna Drop Something Hot?

Is Kevin Federline the next Eminem? Or perhaps just a hillbilly who married a teen pop star on the decline? I think the latter is more likely.

"The dawn of Kevin Federline's hip-hop career has begun, though it remains to be seen if it will last past breakfast. A track by Federline was posted on the Internet by Disco D, the producer of his upcoming album, "The Truth," to be released next year.

Though the song has since been taken off Disco D's Web site, it has popped up elsewhere, giving a glimpse of Mr. Britney Spears' rhyming, um, abilities.

"Back then, they called me K-Fed, but you can call me Daddy instead," he intones in the chorus of "Y'all Ain't Ready."

Over an industrial beat reminiscent of Kelis' "Milkshake," Federline represents himself as a brash, newsworthy figure ahead of his time. "People always asking me when's the release date / Well, baby you can wait and see, until then all these Pavarottis followin' me," he raps, nicknaming paparazzi after the Italian opera singer.

Tabloids might remark that their photographers are actually focused on his pop star wife. Before meeting Spears, Federline's career was mostly limited to backup dancing. The couple wed last year and had a son in September. Already garnering comparisons to Vanilla Ice, Federline's album appears destined for late-night punch lines. But the 27-year-old does anticipate some backlash from his musical pursuits: "My prediction is that y'all gonna hate on the style we create, straight 2008."

- From AP, Yahoo! Entertainment News.

I especially like that last line. Does he really talk like that?

The Most Important Active Brains

It is funny how few of these people I know anything about. I always thought I was culturally aware, but obviously I still have a way to go. Or it may just be that most of the intellectuals I know about and read are dead. Who knows?!

"The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll is a list of the 100 most important living public intellectuals in the world which has been compiled in November 2005 by the left-wing Prospect Magazine (UK), on the basis of a reader's ballot comprising more than 20,000 votes. The following are the names of the top 10 according to its classification:

1. Noam Chomsky
2. Umberto Eco
3. Richard Dawkins
4. Václav Havel
5. Christopher Hitchens
6. Paul Krugman
7. Jürgen Habermas
8. Amartya Sen
9. Jared Diamond
10. Salman Rushdie
    

As it happens with many free votes over the Internet, the poll may be a victim of organized voting campaigns and biases introduced by the nationality and language of the organizer. This may be true in the present case, since the number of Iranian intellectuals represented in the list is above that of entire Latin America, Nigeria has almost the totality of votes in the entire Africa and France is abnormally underrepresented.

In addition, the poll suffers from a wide spread of votes between the first and the last places, i.e., most of the nominees below the 50th rank have less than 100 votes. This fact makes the list quite unreliable.

The long list choices have also been criticised. According to a recent comment, "there are quite a few bum notes: assorted posers, dullards, charlatans and pseudo-intellectual crashing this list."

-From Wikipedia.

Danger Deer Meets His Match

"BENTONVILLE, Ark. - For 40 exhausting minutes, Wayne Goldsberry battled a buck with his bare hands in his daughter's bedroom. Goldsberry finally subdued the five-point whitetail deer that crashed through a bedroom window at his daughter's home Friday. When it was over, blood splattered the walls and the deer lay dead on the bedroom floor, its neck broken.

Goldsberry was at his daughter's home when he heard glass breaking. He went back to check on the noise and found the deer.

"I was standing about like this peeking around the corner when the deer came out of the bedroom," said Goldsberry. The deer ran down the hall and into the master bedroom — "jumping back and forth across the bed."

Goldsberry, about 6-feet-1 and 200 pounds, entered the bedroom to confront the deer and, after a brief struggle, emerged to tell his wife to call police. After returning to the bedroom, the fight continued. Goldsberry finally was able to grip the animal and twist its neck, killing it.

Goldsberry, sore from the struggle, dragged the dead animal out of the house.

"He got kicked several times. He was walking bowlegged for a while," Deputy Doug Gay said.

At this time of year, a buck that sees its reflection in a window often charges, believing it is fighting off a rival, Gay said.

Goldsberry had the deer butchered.

"He's in the freezer," the man said before walking to the kitchen and showing off pounds of freshly wrapped venison."

- AP, Yahoo News.

Home Depot's Toliet Tragedy

"BOULDER, Colo. - Home Depot was sued by a shopper who claims he got stuck to a restroom toilet seat because a prankster had smeared it with glue. Bob Dougherty, 57, accused employees of ignoring his cries for help for about 15 minutes because they thought he was kidding.

"They left me there, going through all that stress," Dougherty told The (Boulder) Daily Camera. "They just let me rot."

The lawsuit, filed Friday, said Dougherty was recovering from heart bypass surgery and thought he was having a heart attack when he got stuck at the Louisville store on the day before Halloween 2003. A store employee who heard him calling for help informed the head clerk by radio, but the head clerk "believed it to be a hoax," the lawsuit said.

Home Depot spokeswoman Kathryn Gallagher said she could not comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit said store officials called for an ambulance after about 15 minutes. Paramedics unbolted the toilet seat, and as they wheeled the "frightened and humiliated" Dougherty out of the store, he passed out.

The lawsuit said the toilet seat separated from his skin, leaving abrasions.

"This is not Home Depot's fault," he said. "But I am blaming them for letting me hang in there and just ignoring me."

-AP, Yahoo! News.

Something You Might Want to Look Into: Yonder Mountain String Band

"The Yonder Mountain String Band (YMSB) is a progressive bluegrass group from Nederland, Colorado, outside Boulder.

Formed in the fall of 1998, the band performed mainly in the Colorado - Illinois area. They expanded their touring region to across the country, and by the summer of 2003 they visited Europe.

Jeff Austin picked up the mandolin only a few years before forming YMSB. He will often break into a freeform skat during a song.

Ben Kaufmann's ability to write songs has formed a solid foundation on which the band's repertoire has grown steadily since 1998. Among his earlier compositions are, "The Bolton Stretch" (Elevation), "On The Run" (Elevation), and the epic live song "Traffic Jam" (Mtn. Tracks Vol 3).

Dave Johnston forms a great deal of the band's overall sound with his banjo, which essentially serves as Yonder's percussion. He sings in a low tone. Of all the members, Dave has contributed the most instrumentals, with Adam second. Jeff and Ben have put words to all of their songs.

Adam Aijala's guitar playing forms a framework for many of YMSB's songs. One of Adam's most well-known songs, written back in the days of Elevation, is "Left Me In A Hole."

-From Wikipedia.

The Upside of Anger

"PITTSBURGH – Anger is good for you, as long as you keep it below a boil, according to new psychology research based on face reading. People who respond to stressful situations with short-term anger or indignation have a sense of control and optimism that lacks in those who respond with fear. "These are the most exciting data I've ever collected," Carnegie Mellon psychologist Jennifer Lerner told a gathering of science writers here last month."

"Lerner previously studied Americans' emotional response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks two months afterward and found that anger triggers feelings of certainty and control. People who reacted with anger were more optimistic about risk and more likely to favor an aggressive response to terrorism. Go ahead, get angry

So in maddening situations in which anger or indignation are justified, anger is not a bad idea, the thinking goes. In fact, it's adaptive, Lerner says, and it's a healthier response than fear.

Chronic, explosive anger or a hostile outlook on the world is still bad for you, contributing to heart disease and high blood pressure, research shows.

The new research supports the idea that humans have more than one uniform response to stress and that fear and anger provoke different responses from our nervous systems and the parts of our brain, such as the pituitary, that deal with tough situations.

The results were published in a recent issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry.

Charles Darwin was the first scholar to propose that you can read people's faces. More recently, Paul Ekman is the master of observing emotions on people's faces. He has even identified rare, super-sensitive people who are expert face readers and can accurately tell when people are lying."

Robin Lloyd, LiveScience.com.

Tray Banks: Operation Undercover Obese

"Tyra Banks has gone undercover as a 350-pound woman. Banks wore the fat suit to experience what it's like to be obese.

"It seemed like the last form of open discrimination that's OK, and I decided to put on a 350-pound suit myself and live that life for a day and see what happens," the 31-year-old former supermodel told AP Radio in a recent interview. "And it was one of the most heartbreaking days of my life." Banks said she was shocked at the reaction.

"I started walking down the street and within 10 seconds, a trio of people looked at me, snickered, looked me right in my eye and started pointing and laughing in my face," the talk-show host said. "And I had no idea it was that blatant."

The segment will air Monday on "The Tyra Banks Show."

Banks, who had a sonogram on her show in September to prove that her breasts are real, is also planning a Nov. 18 segment on pursuing "a beautiful booty."

She will reveal her own "dimpled butt" and receive endermologie treatment on the set."

-From Yahoo Entertainment News.

Hello Future! Survey: One in Five Teens Have Own Blogs.

"CHICAGO - Nearly three in five school-age teens with Internet access have created online content, including Web pages with artwork, photos and stories — and about a fifth have their own blogs, which also allow friends and other readers to create feedback postings.

Those are some of the findings from a survey of 12- to 17-year-olds conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

The survey also found that older school-age girls with online access were most likely to keep a blog. About a quarter of girls, ages 15 to 17, did so, compared with 15 percent of boys in that age group.

Among adults, Pew says about 7 percent of Internet users have created their own blogs, or online diaries. And while 26 percent of adults say they read blogs, 38 percent of young people with online access said they do so.

Researchers note that the main reason teens are drawn to blogs is a wish to keep in touch with one another.

"Blogging for teens is about staying tuned into their friendship networks, not about politics or people getting in trouble at school, which are two of the main narratives that journalists have covered in recent months," says Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at Pew who helped compile the report."

- Martha Irvine, AP National Writer.

Hey Sandy! It's Pete and Pete! Season 2 on DVD!

"The Adventures of Pete & Pete was an American television series about two brothers named Pete which aired on the Nickelodeon cable channel. Most recently it was found on the Noggin cable network for teen programming but has since been dropped. The show's first two seasons were released on DVD on May 17 and November 1, 2005, respectively; a third-season set is slated for release February 28, 2006.

"The Adventures of Pete & Pete" is unique amongst contemporary children's television series in that it is an abstract and rather absurd portrayal of everyday suburban life in the United States. The antics of the two brothers of the same name and their various friends and enemies are ludicrous in nature, but it is often easy to identify with the potent suburban truths stated in the narrations of Older Pete. Upon paying careful attention to each episode, it is easy to pick out dozens of obscure cultural references, strange little truths of life, and other oddities that do not appear in other series. This has made the show, which only aired as a weekly series for 3 seasons, a lasting classic amongst the children of the early nineties. Incredible demand for the show resulted in its selection as one of Nickelodeon's first two "Rewind Collection" DVD releases, and spurred the speedy release of second- and third-season sets.

Although Pete & Pete was a children's show aired on a children's network, many of the jokes and allusions were lost on the younger generation. It is not to say that some subject matter was mature, but simply that many referential antecedents fall outside of the target audience's experience."

-From Wikipedia.

Hello Fuel Cell Car, Hello Future!

"LOS ANGELES , You would never guess that Jon Spallino drives what is probably the most expensive car in this city, known for its automotive excess. Or that he is the world's most technologically advanced commuter.

"When the cars pull up to me, the Porsches and the Bentleys and all that, I just sort of say, well, that's nice, but for what this costs I could buy 10 of those," said Spallino, while driving up the Route 405 freeway from his office in Irvine, California, toward his home in Redondo Beach.

Spallino was at the wheel of his silver Honda FCX, a car worth about $1 million that looks like a cross between a compact - say, a Volkswagen Golf - and a cinder block.

The FCX is powered by hydrogen fuel cells, the futuristic technology that many automakers see as an eventual solution to the world's energy woes, though the viability of the technology is a subject of vigorous debate inside and outside the auto industry.

In one of the more unusual experiments in the auto industry's history, Spallino - a 40-year-old executive at a California construction and engineering company - and his wife, Sandy, have been leasing the FCX since July, for $500 a month.

The Spallinos, with their daughters Adrianna, 11, and Anna, 9, "aren't just the first fuel-cell family on their block," as one Honda ad recently put it. "They're the first in the world."

So grandiose is the experiment that Honda has made arrangements with a distributor of hydrogen to have a refueling station built near the Spallinos' house. But it's not that they can use it: the local fire department, wary of this elemental zeppelin gas, has yet to allow the station to open. "

-Danny Hakim, The New York Times

Kurt Vonnegut Wrote This Last Year. I Just Found Out.

"TROUT: I’ve never voted in my whole damn life. I didn’t want to be complicit. But is it time I did?

KV: The planet’s immune system is obviously trying to get rid of us, and high time! But sure, go vote for somebody. What the hell.

TROUT: Everybody’s so ignorant.

KV: The overwhelming popularity of President Bush, in spite of everything, finally shows us what the American people, whom we have so sentimentalized for so long, a la Norman Rockwell, really are, thanks to TV and purposely lousy public schools: ignorant. Count on it!

TROUT: You ever meet anybody who was really smart?

KV: Only one: Saul Steinberg, the graphic artist who’s dead now. Everybody I know is dead now, present company excepted. I could ask Saul anything, and six seconds would pass, and then he would give me a perfect answer. He growled a perfect answer. He was born in Rumania, and, according to him, he was born into a house where “the geese peeked in the windows.”

TROUT: Like what kind of questions?

KV: I said, “Saul, what should I think about Picasso?” Six seconds went by, and then he growled, “God put him on Earth to show us what it’s like to be really rich.” I said, “Saul, I’m a novelist, and many of my friends are novelists, but I can’t help feeling that some of them are in a very different business from mine, even though I like their books a lot. What would make me feel that way?” Six seconds went by, and then he growled, “It is very simple: There are two kinds of artists, and one is not superior to the other. But one kind responds to the history of his or her art so far, and the other responds to life itself.”

I said, “Saul, are you gifted?” Six seconds went by, and then he growled, “No. But what we respond to in any work of art is the artist’s struggle against his or her limitations.”

TROUT: OK."

-An Excerpt from Requiem for a Dreamer by Kurt Vonnegut.

Presenting Laser Buddah!

"TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese artist Hiro Yamagata announced plans to recreate Afghanistan's destroyed Bamiyan Buddhas using as many as 240 laser beam images, a giant project that could also bring electricity to local people. The 60 million-dollar exhibit, which is slated to begin in June 2007, will for several years replicate the images of the statues, which were the world's tallest standing Buddhas until the Taliban regime destroyed them.

'When I first visited Bamiyan, I was very impressed with the sights of valleys, as well as local children, local people,' said the globally acclaimed artist, known for his large laser-beam art works.

'Every time I go back, I feel the growing passion of wanting to create art there,' he added.

Yamagata plans to show the images for two hours from sunset four days per week. He is still in negotiation with the Afghan government and local entities on how long the exhibition will last but it will likely be for years, he said.

The hi-tech project to recreate the destroyed cultural assets could also be important for the local economy in one of the world's poorest countries."

-From Yahoo News

Day of the Dead 2005: Still Time to Celebrate

"The Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos, Día de los Difuntos or, simply, Día de Muertos in Spanish) is a Mexican celebration of the memory of deceased ancestors. It is celebrated on November 1 and November 2, coinciding with the similar Roman Catholic celebrations of All Saints Day and All Souls Day. While it is primarily viewed as a Mexican holiday, it is also celebrated in communities in the United States with large populations of Mexican-Americans, the Philippines and to a lesser extent elsewhere in some countries of Latin America. It is a public holiday in Brazil, and a large number of people celebrate it there typically by visiting cemeteries and churches, taking flowers, lighting candles, and praying.

Despite the morbid subject matter, this holiday is celebrated joyfully, and though it occurs at the same time as Halloween, All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day, the mood of The Day of the Dead is much lighter, with the emphasis on celebrating and honoring the lives of the deceased, rather than fearing evil or malevolent spirits."

-From Wikipedia.

A Smart Man with Smart Tastes

Kenneth Wayne Jennings III holds the record for the longest winning streak on the game show, Jeopardy!, with 74 consecutive victories and over three million dollars in winnings. Jennings has become a cult figure since then, appearing in several T.V. commercials and other game shows. He also is a man with a good taste in movies. Here is a website Jennings maintained before he became famous. Too bad he doesn't update it anymore; I would like to get his take on The Life Aquatic among other things.

Guilty of Hooliganism!

"Mathias Rust (born 1968) is a German pilot who, in 1987, at the age of 19, flew from Hamburg to Moscow, eluding the Soviet air defences and landed in Red Square near the Kremlin.

After leaving Hamburg on May 28 Rust refuelled his Cessna 172B at Helsinki-Malmi Airport. He told air traffic control that he was going to Stockholm, but he turned his plane towards the east. Rust disappeared from the Finnish air space near Sipoo. He headed towards the Baltic coastline and turned towards Moscow. By chance, he flew into the Soviet Union on the national border guard's holiday, and the lax security that resulted allowed him to fly into Soviet territory unnoticed. Rust flew straight towards Moscow and landed in Red Square. He was arrested immediately by the Soviet authorities.

Mikhail Gorbachev took advantage of this, replacing the defense and air defense ministers (both of whom were opposed to glasnost and perestroika) with men who supported his policies. More than 2,000 officers (again, most of whom were opposed to Gorbachev's reform) lost their jobs. This move was critical in winning over the previously fiercely conservative and anti-reform military.

Rust's trial started in Moscow on September 2, 1987. He was sentenced to four years in a labour camp for hooliganism, disregard of aviation laws and infringement of the Soviet border. After a prison sentence of 432 days in the Soviet Union, he was returned to West Germany on August 3, 1988, after serving 18 months in a Soviet prison."

-from Wikipedia.

To Be a Writer, One Must Write

"National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and -- when the thing is done -- the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children."

- From National Novel Writing Month website.

A Chemical Quest for the Green Menace

"Raised in New Orleans, a city once dubbed the Absinthe Capital of the World, Breaux has long been fascinated with the drink. Absinthe is a 140-proof green liqueur made from herbs like fennel, anise, and the exceptionally bitter leaves of Artemisia absinthium. That last ingredient, also known as wormwood, gives the drink its name - and its sinister reputation. For a century, absinthe has been demonized and outlawed, based on the belief that it leads to absinthism - far worse than mere alcoholism. Drinking it supposedly causes epilepsy and 'criminal dementia.'"

"Breaux has made understanding the drink his life's work. He has pored over hundred-year-old texts, few of them in English. He has corresponded with other amateur liquor historians. The more he's learned, the more he's felt compelled to use his knowledge of chemistry to crack the absinthe code, figure out exactly what's in it, puncture the myths surrounding it - and maybe even drink a glass or two."

-Brian Ashcraft, Wired Magazine.