FRIDAY, April 27 (HealthDay News) -- A new imaging technique that measures diffusion of water through tumors may help guide the treatment of advanced prostate cancer that's spread to the bones, says a study by researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

This technique, called a functional diffusion map, uses an MRI scan and special software to monitor the movement of water through tumor cells over the course of treatment. As tumor cells die, this diffusion of water increases, the researchers explain.

In the study, the Michigan team tested the technique in mice with metastatic prostate cancer.

Mice that received chemotherapy showed progressive changes over the three weeks of treatment, while mice that did not receive chemotherapy had little or no change in water diffusion.

When the researchers removed the tumors from the mice, they found that the functional diffusion map had accurately measured tumor response to treatment. The study was published in the April 15 issue of Cancer Research.

The findings suggest that the functional diffusion map could provide an early assessment of tumor response to treatment, the scientists said. This could help patients avoid wasting time on a treatment that isn't working before they switch to an alternative therapy.

Currently, there is no way to detect bone tumor response to therapy, study author Brian D. Ross, a professor of radiology and biological chemistry at the U-M Medical School and co-director of the Molecular Imaging Program at the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center, said in a prepared statement.

About 500,000 people in the United States develop metastatic prostate or breast cancers that spread to the bone, he said.

Y! News 

Okaz and al-Hayat newspapers said worshippers at a mosque in the desert town of Arar in north Saudi Arabia lodged a complaint with police saying the man, a pharmacist, had left copies of the Muslim holy book in the mosque washrooms.

Saudi Arabia executes murderers, rapists and drug traffickers to death by public beheading, according to an austere version of Sunni Islam. Anyone found guilty of apostasy can also face death.

Ali al-Ahmed, a prominent Saudi rights activist who has followed the case, said the verdict raised questions about Saudi Arabia's justice system, which rights groups have criticised over a lack of legal representation and codified laws.

'The man is Muslim and an Egyptian. I believe he was set up by extremists zealots,' said Ahmed, a critic of the Saudi government who is based at the Gulf Institute in Washington.

Saudi Arabia often responds to rights groups saying Islamic law specifies clear rights and obligations for Muslims and non-Muslim residents, who must abide by its laws and customs.

Four Sri Lankans were publicly beheaded then displayed on wooden crosses in February for armed robbery after what U.S.-based Human Rights Watch called a sham trial.

Once again,  "The Religion of Peace^TM"

Sign on San Diego 

Apr 30, 2007, 09:02

NEW YORK - Former vice president Al Gore believes breast feeding can play a significant role in deterring the rise of global warming.

Speaking yesterday afternoon at the Earth Institute's annual solar picnic in New York's Central Park, Mr. Gore declared, "If one out of two mothers in developed countries were to breast feed their children, the mean temperature of the Earth could be lowered one degree by the year 2090."

As he stood beneath a banner that read, "Use your globes to save ours," the former vice president explained how the production, transportation, and preparation of one quart of cow's milk added to the increase in global warming, but the production of one quart of breast milk did not.

Mr. Gore was then joined on stage by his wife, Tipper, spokeswoman for the Earth Institute "Tits for Tots" campaign. Mrs. Gore removed her blouse and demonstrated proper breast feeding techniques on an infant mannequin.

After she had finished her demonstration and had acknowledged the cheers of the crowd, Mr. Gore shouted, "What Tipper just did would get her stared at and mocked in many public places in the United States, even though she's got a fine rack for a woman her age. I mean, any age. Are those some good-looking puppies or what?"

Mr. Gore then kissed his wife passionately before she quit the stage.

The former vice president concluded his remarks by urging lawmakers at the state and national levels to pass legislation making it illegal for anyone to stare at or to make lewd remarks about women breast feeding in public places such as buses, restaurants, and amusement parks.

"If you grew 'em, your kids can chew 'em," said Mr. Gore. "Hey, that would make a great campaign slogan, wouldn't it?"

Pugbus.net
 

Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.

Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.

Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena. [Ya think? -ed.]

The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds.

In a paper published in the journal Nature, she suggests that such winds can stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet’s temperature.

Fenton’s team unearthed heat maps of the Martian surface from Nasa’s Viking mission in the 1970s and compared them with maps gathered more than two decades later by Mars Global Surveyor. They found there had been widespread changes, with some areas becoming darker.

When a surface darkens it absorbs more heat, eventually radiating that heat back to warm the thin Martian atmosphere: lighter surfaces have the opposite effect. The temperature differences between the two are thought to be stirring up more winds, and dust, creating a cycle that is warming the planet.

I'm sure Al Gore would be MORE than willing to sell someone Carbon Credits...

The Times Online

UPDATE: 

Wait, I have it!  Greenhouse gases are reflecting heat from earth onto Mars!  It’s still our fault!

Greenpeace also recommends CFLs while simultaneously bemoaning contamination caused by a mercury-thermometer factory in India. But where are mercury-containing CFLs made? Not in the United States, under strict environmental regulation. CFLs are made in India and China, where environmental standards are virtually non-existent.

And let's not forget about the regulatory nightmare in the U.S. known as the Superfund law, the EPA regulatory program best known for requiring expensive but often needless cleanup of toxic waste sites, along with endless litigation over such cleanups.

We'll eventually be disposing billions and billions of CFL mercury bombs. Much of the mercury from discarded and/or broken CFLs is bound to make its way into the environment and give rise to Superfund liability, which in the past has needlessly disrupted many lives, cost tens of billions of dollars and sent many businesses into bankruptcy.

As each CFL contains five milligrams of mercury, at the Maine "safety" standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter, it would take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to "safely" contain all the mercury in a single CFL. While CFL vendors and environmentalists tout the energy cost savings of CFLs, they conveniently omit the personal and societal costs of CFL disposal.

Not only are CFLs much more expensive than incandescent bulbs and emit light that many regard as inferior to incandescent bulbs, they pose a nightmare if they break and require special disposal procedures. Yet governments (egged on by environmentalists and the Wal-Marts of the world) are imposing on us such higher costs, denial of lighting choice, disposal hassles and breakage risks in the name of saving a few dollars every year on the electric bill? - Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk-science expert and advocate of free enterprise, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Yeah.  Much better alternative than incandescents.  Morons.

Financial Post 

TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) -- Iranian police have warned barbers against offering Western-style hair cuts or plucking the eyebrows of their male customers, Iranian media said Sunday.

The report by a reformist daily, later confirmed by an Iranian news agency, appeared to be another sign of authorities cracking down on clothing and other fashion deemed to be against Islamic values.

"Western hairstyles ... have been banned," the newspaper Etemad said in a front-page headline.

It came a week after police launched a crackdown against the growing number of young women testing the limits of the law with shorter, brighter and skimpier clothing ahead of the summer months.

Under Iran's Islamic Sharia law, imposed after the 1979 revolution, women are obligated to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise their figures.

Violators can receive lashes, fines and imprisonment.

The student news agency ISNA quoted a police statement as saying: "In an official order to barbershops, they have been warned to avoid using Western hair styles and doing men's eyebrows."

Iranian young men have in recent years started paying more attention to the way they look and dress, especially in affluent parts of the capital Tehran. Spiked up hair, by using gel, is known as the Khorusi (Rooster) style and some also use make-up.

Several hairdressers for men in Tehran offer cuts in the style of Hollywood movie stars and other Western celebrities. Clients can also have their eyebrows plucked.

CNN 

By Ted Nugent
Special to CNN

WACO, Texas (CNN) -- Zero tolerance, huh? Gun-free zones, huh? Try this on for size: Columbine gun-free zone, New York City pizza shop gun-free zone, Luby's Cafeteria gun-free zone, Amish school in Pennsylvania gun-free zone and now Virginia Tech gun-free zone.

Anybody see what the evil Brady Campaign and other anti-gun cults have created? I personally have zero tolerance for evil and denial. And America had best wake up real fast that the brain-dead celebration of unarmed helplessness will get you killed every time, and I've about had enough of it.

Nearly a decade ago, a Springfield, Oregon, high schooler, a hunter familiar with firearms, was able to bring an unfolding rampage to an abrupt end when he identified a gunman attempting to reload his .22-caliber rifle, made the tactical decision to make a move and tackled the shooter.

A few years back, an assistant principal at Pearl High School in Mississippi, which was a gun-free zone, retrieved his legally owned Colt .45 from his car and stopped a Columbine wannabe from continuing his massacre at another school after he had killed two and wounded more at Pearl.

At an eighth-grade school dance in Pennsylvania, a boy fatally shot a teacher and wounded two students before the owner of the dance hall brought the killing to a halt with his own gun.

More recently, just a few miles up the road from Virginia Tech, two law school students ran to fetch their legally owned firearm to stop a madman from slaughtering anybody and everybody he pleased. These brave, average, armed citizens neutralized him pronto.

My hero, Dr. Suzanne Gratia Hupp, was not allowed by Texas law to carry her handgun into Luby's Cafeteria that fateful day in 1991, when due to bureaucrat-forced unarmed helplessness she could do nothing to stop satanic George Hennard from killing 23 people and wounding more than 20 others before he shot himself. Hupp was unarmed for no other reason than denial-ridden "feel good" politics.

She has since led the charge for concealed weapon upgrade in Texas, where we can now stop evil. Yet, there are still the mindless puppets of the Brady Campaign and other anti-gun organizations insisting on continuing the gun-free zone insanity by which innocents are forced into unarmed helplessness. Shame on them. Shame on America. Shame on the anti-gunners all.

No one was foolish enough to debate Ryder truck regulations or ammonia nitrate restrictions or a "cult of agriculture fertilizer" following the unabashed evil of Timothy McVeigh's heinous crime against America on that fateful day in Oklahoma City. No one faulted kitchen utensils or other hardware of choice after Jeffrey Dahmer was caught drugging, mutilating, raping, murdering and cannibalizing his victims. Nobody wanted "steak knife control" as they autopsied the dead nurses in Chicago, Illinois, as Richard Speck went on trial for mass murder.

Evil is as evil does, and laws disarming guaranteed victims make evil people very, very happy. Shame on us.

Already spineless gun control advocates are squawking like chickens with their tiny-brained heads chopped off, making political hay over this most recent, devastating Virginia Tech massacre, when in fact it is their own forced gun-free zone policy that enabled the unchallenged methodical murder of 32 people.

Thirty-two people dead on a U.S. college campus pursuing their American Dream, mowed-down over an extended period of time by a lone, non-American gunman in illegal possession of a firearm on campus in defiance of a zero-tolerance gun law. Feel better yet? Didn't think so.

Who doesn't get this? Who has the audacity to demand unarmed helplessness? Who likes dead good guys?

I'll tell you who. People who tramp on the Second Amendment, that's who. People who refuse to accept the self-evident truth that free people have the God-given right to keep and bear arms, to defend themselves and their loved ones. People who are so desperate in their drive to control others, so mindless in their denial that they pretend access to gas causes arson, Ryder trucks and fertilizer cause terrorism, water causes drowning, forks and spoons cause obesity, dialing 911 will somehow save your life, and that their greedy clamoring to "feel good" is more important than admitting that armed citizens are much better equipped to stop evil than unarmed, helpless ones.

Pray for the families of victims everywhere, America. Study the methodology of evil. It has a profile, a system, a preferred environment where victims cannot fight back. Embrace the facts, demand upgrade and be certain that your children's school has a better plan than Virginia Tech or Columbine. Eliminate the insanity of gun-free zones, which will never, ever be gun-free zones. They will only be good guy gun-free zones, and that is a recipe for disaster written in blood on the altar of denial. I, for one, refuse to genuflect there.

CNN

By Chris Demorro
Staff Writer

The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer.

Before we delve into the seedy underworld of hybrids, you must first understand how a hybrid works. For this, we will use the most popular hybrid on the market, the Toyota Prius.

The Prius is powered by not one, but two engines: a standard 76 horsepower, 1.5-liter gas engine found in most cars today and a battery- powered engine that deals out 67 horsepower and a whooping 295ft/lbs of torque, below 2000 revolutions per minute. Essentially, the Toyota Synergy Drive system, as it is so called, propels the car from a dead stop to up to 30mph. This is where the largest percent of gas is consumed. As any physics major can tell you, it takes more energy to get an object moving than to keep it moving. The battery is recharged through the braking system, as well as when the gasoline engine takes over anywhere north of 30mph. It seems like a great energy efficient and environmentally sound car, right?

You would be right if you went by the old government EPA estimates, which netted the Prius an incredible 60 miles per gallon in the city and 51 miles per gallon on the highway. Unfortunately for Toyota, the government realized how unrealistic their EPA tests were, which consisted of highway speeds limited to 55mph and acceleration of only 3.3 mph per second. The new tests which affect all 2008 models give a much more realistic rating with highway speeds of 80mph and acceleration of 8mph per second. This has dropped the Prius’s EPA down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs.

However, if that was the only issue with the Prius, I wouldn’t be writing this article. It gets much worse.

Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce? [Or a rip-off... -ed.]

Wait, I haven’t even got to the best part yet.

When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis.

Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust,” the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.

The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.

So, if you are really an environmentalist - ditch the Prius. Instead, buy one of the most economical cars available - a Toyota Scion xB. The Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the road. If you are still obsessed over gas mileage - buy a Chevy Aveo and fix that lead foot.

One last fun fact for you: it takes five years to offset the premium price of a Prius. Meaning, you have to wait 60 months to save any money over a non-hybrid car because of lower gas expenses.

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research recently generated headlines when it announced that former Vice President Al Gore's Nashville, Tenn., estate "devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours" of electricity in 2006, "more than 20 times the national average."

This free-market think tank's phones lit up when it analyzed Nashville Electric Service's public records and identified an inconvenient gap between Gore's conservationism and his energy consumption. The research center's one-page press release was greeted with enough megawatts of hatred to power the South.

"I was accused several times of being a 'stupid, redneck bitch,' " recalls Nicole Williams, who fielded numerous calls. "I repeatedly was called a 'whore' and asked 'Whose whore are you?' for three days straight, almost as if those were talking points ... I was shocked by these sexist insults -- basically attacking my gender."

The calls continued beyond Williams' Nashville office.

"I had to change my home number and get an unlisted number," Williams says.

"I got about 10 death threats by phone. I got the 'I'm gonna get you'-type threats more than 100 times ... I worried I would get shot walking to my car."

Williams discovered her obsolete address posted online. "If they could find my old home address, it would not be so hard to find a current one."

Gore's defenders also spewed venomous e-mails. They sent the research center nearly 3,000 Gore-related messages that exhibited the very bigotry the Left routinely denounces.

Warning: These offensive, often-vulgar and occasionally unschooled comments reveal the vitriol behind much of today's "progressive" rhetoric.

Many e-mails displayed Dixiephobia -- an intense disdain for the South and Southerners.

"Why don't you all go back to shooting one another across the hollows instead of trying to make people think anyone in Tennessee has an ounce of intelligence?" Roger Miller insisted. "Get your snaggle tooth grins capped and learn to read and write."

"W.T.F. difference would it make if he was (sic) using 1,000 times more energy than the average household if it came from clean energy?" Thomas Grinnell wondered. "Don't think about that too much. It will give your southern mullet a headache."

"You really should concentrate on what Southerners do best," D. Hunter advised. "Sodomizing and impregnating little children!"

Christopher LaBarge declared: "I hope you all die slowly and have your hearts and brains trampled to pieces you small-minded, ignorant, backwoods ideologues."

"We should have flattened the South when we had the chance!" wrote Mount Laurel, New Jersey's Robert Dodelin. "If ever you confederates (sic) want to leave the Union please do. We Nothen (sic) states would love to stop having to subsidize you with our tax dollars."

This anti-Southernism mystifies TCPR President Drew Johnson.

"Some people must believe the Mason-Dixon Line runs between our office and Gore's mansion," Johnson says. "No one would call Gore a redneck, but when we uncovered his hypocritical energy use, it somehow made me a sister-dating hillbilly. That's quite amusing, since Gore and I live in Nashville, less than five miles apart."

Some e-mails, like Benjamin Greuel's, reflected anti-religious bias: "Go (blank) yourselves you neo con, non-secular, bible thumpin, anti-science dumb (blanks)."

Similarly, Anthony Black wrote: "You bunch of stupid hick red-necks. I am sure you are quite religious, yet you have no problem destroying His creation with pollution; and, rather than addressing that, you cast dispersions (sic) on Al Gore's home energy use.

"How about you have a do (sic) humanity a favor and have a stroke," Russ Smith recommended. "You silly metrosexual twit, need some more hi-lites in your hair?"

Two e-mails feature chillingly violent imagery.

"You people are such slime," TJ Williams noted. "You are a total waste of skin and air. Help the environment and jump off a cliff."

Bob Beaver urged: "Find a hole and stick a knife in it."

Such anti-intellectual intimidation reflects the high-octane hate that fuels so much Leftist discourse. Rather than simply argue that Johnson, Williams, and their colleagues are ecologically misguided or misinformed, these bullies call them barefoot, same-sex-loving, Winchester-wielding whores and evangel-yokels. Remember this whenever liberals crow about diversity, tolerance, and open-mindedness.

Daily Southtown 

PUPILS and teachers have been told by an official body not to stare at Muslims for fear of causing offence.

A document intended to educate against religious intolerance and sectarianism urges teachers to “make pupils aware of the various forms of Islamophobia, ie stares, verbal abuse, physical abuse”.

But Learning Teaching Scotland (LTS), which issued the advice to schools north of the border, has been criticised by politicians and Muslim leaders for going “over the top”.

The document states: “Some Muslims may choose to wear clothing or display their faith in a way that makes them visible. For example, women may be wearing a headscarf, and men might be wearing a skullcap. Staring or looking is a form of discrimination as it makes the other person feel uncomfortable, or as though they are not normal.” [Oh, for the love of Pete...  -ed.]

Osama Saeed, a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, accused officials of going too far. “There are far more serious elements of Islamophobia. People look at all sorts of things — that can just be a glance. A glance and a stare are two different things — glances happen naturally when all sorts of things catch your eye whereas a stare is probably gawking at something.

“Personally I have not encountered much of a problem with people staring. I don’t know how you legislate for that.”

Murdo Fraser, deputy leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said: “In a multicultural society like ours there are people with all different forms of dress and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect children in particular to look at those who are differently dressed from them. To describe this as a form of discrimination seems to go completely over the top.”

Meanwhile, a survey of London’s Muslims shows that more of them identify with Britain than do the majority population. The Gallup poll, which is part of the biggest global survey of Muslims, shows 57% of Muslims identified with Britain as their home, compared with 48% of the rest of the population.

The poll also found that 74% of Muslims believe they are loyal to Britain and 78% of Muslims said they had confidence in Britain’s police force — a higher proportion than the rest of the population.

The survey shows 67% of Muslims have confidence in the judicial system and 73% believe in the British democratic process. This compares with 55% and 60% respectively among the general public.

Times Online 

1. Word processors never display a cursor.
2. You never have to use the space-bar when typing long sentences.
3. Movie characters never make typing mistakes.
4. All monitors display inch-high letters.
5. High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA or some such governmental institution, will have easy to understand graphical interfaces.
6. Those that don’t have graphical interfaces will have incredibly powerful text-based command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English.
7. Note: Command line interfaces will give you access to any information you want by simply typing, “ACCESS THE SECRET FILES” on any near-by keyboard.
8. You can also infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing “UPLOAD VIRUS”. (See “Fortress”.)
9. All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain’s desktop computer even if it’s turned off.
10. Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn’t go faster than you can read. (Really advanced computers will also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer.)
11. All computer panels operate on thousands of volts and have explosive devices underneath their surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash of light, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks and an explosion that causes you to jump backwards.
12. People typing on a computer can safely turn it off without saving the data.
13. A hacker is always able to break into the most sensitive computer in the world by guessing the secret password in two tries.
14. You may bypass “PERMISSION DENIED” message by using the “OVERRIDE” function. (See “Demolition Man”.)
15. Computers only take 2 seconds to boot up instead of the average minutes for desktop PCs and 30 minutes or more for larger systems that can run 24 hours, 365 days a year without a reset.
16. Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. Movie modems usually appear to transmit data at the speed of two gigabytes per second.
17. When the power plant/missile site/main computer overheats, all control panels will explode shortly before the entire building will.
18. If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen (See “Clear and Present Danger”).
19. If a disk contains encrypted files, you are automatically asked for a password when you insert it.
20. Computers can interface with any other computer regardless of the manufacturer or galaxy where it originated. (See “Independence Day”.)
21. Computer disks will work on any computer has a floppy drive and all software is usable on any platforms.
22. The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it will have (See “Aliens”.)
23. Note: You must be highly trained to operate high-tech computers because the buttons have no labels except for the “SELF-DESTRUCT&rdqu o; button.
24. Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional active animation, photo-realistic graphics capabilities.
25. Laptops always have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and performance similar to a CRAY Supercomputer.
26. Whenever a character looks at a monitor, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto their face. (See “Alien” or “2001″)
27. Searches on the internet will always return what you are looking for no matter how vague your keywords are. (See “Mission Impossible”, Tom Cruise searches with keywords like “file” and “computer” and 3 results are returned.)

Programming Blog

WASHINGTON – Someone has finally fixed an approximate taxpayer cost of between 12 million and 15 million illegal aliens residing in the U.S.

A new study by the Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector found a household headed by an individual without a high school education, including about two-thirds of illegal aliens, costs U.S. taxpayers more than $32,000 in federal, state and local benefits. That same family contributes an average of $9,000 a year in taxes, resulting in a net tax burden of $22,449 each year.

Over the course of the household's lifetime that tax burden translates to $1.1 million.

If the lower figure of 12 million illegal aliens is used for estimation purposes, the total tax burden translates to $2.2 trillion.

"Would any of us buy shares in a company that we knew would produce a loss of a million dollars a share," asks Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, in response to the study. "Cheap labor is not cheap at the cost of over a million dollars per head of household."

Rector's study, "The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Households to the U.S. Taxpayer," examines the economics of the 17.7 million American households made up of people without a high-school degree. Using numbers from the Census Bureau, the Congressional Research Service, the Bureau of Labor Standards and other government agencies, Rector determined what they earn, what they spend and what they receive in government services.

About half of the 17.7 million households studied are illegal aliens. About two-thirds of illegal alien households are headed by someone without a high school degree. Only 10 percent of native-born Americans fit into that category.

"Over the next ten years the total cost of low-skill households to the taxpayer (immediate benefits minus taxes paid) is likely to be at least $3.9 trillion," Rector writes. "This number would go up significantly if changes in immigration policy lead to substantial increases in the number of low-skill immigrants entering the country and receiving services."

There ya go, Surrogate.  A hard number for what ILLEGALS cost us a year, not that you'll care...

Close the fucking borders NOW! 

World Net Daily 

The essay was removed from the CBS Web site and an editor’s note was posted saying the item should have credited Jeffrey Zaslow of the Journal, the network said Tuesday.

An editor for The Wall Street Journal called CBS News
to point out the similarities of the April 4 notebook item to Zaslow’s article, headlined “Of the Places You’ll Go, Is the Library Still One of Them?” The
pieces talk about how libraries are seen differently by children from their parents.

CBS would not identify the producer fired for the transgression.

The hits just keep on comin'...

MSNBC 

For the past two weeks I've written about how the media -- part of the Fear Industrial Complex -- profit by scaring us to death about things that rarely happen, like terrorism, child abductions, and shark attacks.

We do it because we get caught up in the excitement of the story. And for ratings.

Worse, because many reporters are statistically illiterate, personal-injury lawyers get us to hype risks that barely threaten people, like secondhand smoke, or getting cancer from trace amounts of chemicals. Sometimes they even con us into scaring you about risks that don't exist at all, like contracting anti-immune disease from breast implants.

Newsrooms are full of English majors who acknowledge that they are not good at math, but still rush to make confident pronouncements about a global-warming "crisis" and the coming of bird flu.

Bird flu was called the No. 1 threat to the world. But bird flu has killed no one in America, while regular flu -- the boring kind -- kills tens of thousands. New York City internist Marc Siegel says that after the media hype, his patients didn't want to hear that.

"I say, 'You need a flu shot.' You know the regular flu is killing 36,000 per year. They say, 'Don't talk to me about regular flu. What about bird flu?'"

Here's another example. What do you think is more dangerous, a house with a pool or a house with a gun? When, for "20/20," I asked some kids, all said the house with the gun is more dangerous. I'm sure their parents would agree. Yet a child is 100 times more likely to die in a swimming pool than in a gun accident.

Parents don't know that partly because the media hate guns and gun accidents make bigger headlines. Ask yourself which incident would be more likely to be covered on TV.

Media exposure clouds our judgment about real-life odds. Of course, it doesn't help that viewers are as ignorant about probability as reporters are.

To demonstrate that, "20/20" ran an experiment. We asked people to put on blindfolds and then to pick up a red jellybean from one of two plates that held a mixture of red and white jellybeans. We offered $1 to anyone who could pick up a red bean.

Here's the catch: While one plate held 20 jellybeans and the other 100, the plate with 20 beans had a higher percentage of red ones. We put up signs that told people this clearly: "10 percent red" of the small plate and just "7 percent red" of the big plate.

Surprisingly, even with the percentage signs in front of them, a third of the people picked the plate with 100 beans.

What people saw overwhelmed their ability to think abstractly about probability. They saw more red on the big plate. It's one reason people obsess about things that have a small chance of hurting them but ignore real threats.

Another is the illusion of control. People who fear flying are comfortable driving because they think they're "in control." Yet driving is probably the riskiest thing most of us do. Think about it: We drive at 65 mph, a few feet from other cars -- some of which are driven by 16-year olds! And our cameras have caught people curling their eyelashes and reading while driving.

A hundred people die on the road every day. But the media are much more likely to do scare stories about plane crashes than car accidents.

So take our reporting with heavy skepticism. Ignore us when we hyperventilate about mad cow disease and the danger of asbestos hidden behind a wall.

Instead, worry about what's worth worrying about: driving, acting reckless, smoking cigarettes, drinking too much, and eating too much. "What is your blood pressure, what are you eating; are you exercising?" is what patients should think about, says internist Marc Siegel. "But obesity is boring. Heart disease is boring. So we tend to not think of the things that can really get us."

The media make it worse. Instead of educating people to real dangers, we scare them about things that hardly matter.

John Stossel is an award-winning news correspondent and author of Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel--Why Everything You Know is Wrong.

Stossel is a rare gem in the field of "Journalism."

Townhall.com 

Larry is right. The battle is being waged off the battlefield and clearly we aren’t winning the fight. I think part of it is that most conservatives have a certain respect for others and don’t invite controversy where as the left have no shame when it comes to raising their hands and stating their opinion no matter how twisted or empty.

I fly a lot and typically try to not bother others but occasionally I have the opportunity to strike up a conversation or overhear one. There was one instance where I sat through the most empty headed discussion of global warming coming from a guy that sounded like country boy liberal (these are the worst)and an black guy. The were discussing Al Gore’s movie like it was the gospel. I was a few seats back from them so I bit my tongue and managed not to interrupt their conversation. It was a love fest any way one I could live without and probably wouldn’t make a difference in anyway.

Interestingly enough on another flight later in the month I had the luck to be seated in friendly territory and struck up a conversation with a gentleman who did some technology work for credit reporting. I being a data warehousing guy we hit it off. I think I mentioned the weather and he made a causal comment about global warming and which left the door wide open for me which I gladly stepped into. I discussed how most don’t realize that there are only two other periods in the history of the Earth when CO2 levels have fallen below 400ppm and that those periods were the Modern day Quaternary Epoch and the Carboniferous period. I pointed out that I didn’t disagree that the Earth was warming but what I disagreed with was the hysteria and conclusions about it and that how misguided attempts to fix something that isn’t broken could possibly interfere with what could be a coming “Eden”. I went on to describe the state of the Earth during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum when the poles were ice free and subtropical forests existed in Antarctica.

I pointed out that if the world and the environment survived this swing in temperatures in a period of a few thousand years then I had little doubt that the Earth could survive the small swings in comparison predicted by “climate experts” and questioned them and asked that even if man was responsible did they really think our government bureaucracy could be trusted to “fix” something as complex as the environment?

We discussed back and forth for some time and a young lady on my right entered the discussion and in the end we had an enjoyable time not just discussing climate but several other things like the fact that her father was a pilot she was in school and so on. They seemed to come away impressed and in the least I’d made a couple of good acquaintances. The thing that was evident is that these were reasonable people and regardless of the power or weakness of my argument they had not really been exposed to the counterarguments or the idea that there was even a different perspective.

Most people don’t spend their free time contemplating arriving at an accurate picture of climate change or any of the other hundreds of issues. They instead pick up popular phrases and then they take those opinions as their own without even knowing why other than they “feel” right. Why do they feel right? They feel because the brain has a familiarity with those ideas and the way the brain’s neural networks work is through reinforcement of connections between information it is exposed to.

A non questioning person is very venerable to being brainwashed in believing things they have no credible way of explaining why they believe them. The left depends on this and it is why they try to turn arguments into popularity contests and keep them on a personal level and make blanket statements about things that are far from proven.

We need to make sure people hear us and sometimes it is our merely stepping forward to say “I don’t necessarily agree” to a rabid liberal that will benefit our unannounced audience. Liberals want people to think that disagreeing with them is hate, is discrimination, is fascist the only way to fight that is to step forward and have our say. They sure do.

Maelstorm (I visited Daily Kos. It was like visiting Planet Dumbass.)

I rarely post comments from other message boards, but when you're right, you're right...

Link 

The "Bush Lied, People Died" yahoos lurk everywhere. Few can escape them.

Standing at the check-in window of my doctor's office, awaiting my annual prostate exam, I heard a staff member yell out with a smile, "Hi, Mr. Elder. How does it feel to be one of the last guys who supports the war?"

The 20-something-year-old receptionist, who was signing me in, then narrowed her eyes, and the volcano erupted. She tore into an emotional, convoluted, fact-challenged barrage against the president. He lied us into the war, and too many of our soldiers are dying. He's incompetent. He sent young men and women to die for oil and for Halliburton. While he plays commander in chief, the middle class shrinks. He cares only about the rich. His racism showed in his handling of Katrina. Yadda, blah, etc.

I tried to remain calm while considering the source. In general, depending upon the setting, I try to conserve my mood and my energy. But, then there are other times -- and this was one of them.

"You talked about the number of our military personnel who have died in Iraq," I said, "3,500 and counting." "Do you happen to know how many died in World War I?"

"No."

"What about Korea and Vietnam?"

"No."

" What about the Civil War -- both sides?"

"No."

"What about World War II?"

"No."

"We lost over 100,000 in the First World War, with a much smaller population than today. During the Civil War, 600,000 died on both sides, and the population was about 10 percent of today's 300 million. So, adjusted for the population, six million people died during the Civil War."

Soon the other staff members behind the receptionist began to listen, as did the patients sitting in the waiting room.

"By the end of World War II," I continued, "400,000 Americans died. Again, adjusting for today's population, that means nearly 800,000 people -- or less than one half of one percent of those killed so far in Iraq. Of course, every life is precious, but I suggest that before you talk about the 'huge' amount of deaths, you gain some perspective."

"But, what about the lies?" she said.

"Why bother," I said, "maybe my prostate could wait another year. I'll just go down and grab a hamburger."

But I said, "Are you familiar with the Robb-Silberman Commission that concluded the president did not lie about the intelligence on Iraq?"

"No."

"What about the Senate bipartisan panel that concluded the same thing -- that Bush didn't lie?"

"No."

"What about David Kaye?" I said.

"Who?"

"He's the guy Bush sent to Iraq to find stockpiles of WMD. While he didn't find stockpiles of WMD, he spoke of the possibility that Saddam transferred WMD out of the country during the run up of the war. Perhaps more important, he said that no intelligence analyst -- all of whom, by the way, thought Saddam had stockpiles of WMD -- felt pressured to lie simply to provide a motive for Bush to go to war."

"But, we have been in Iraq longer than we fought the whole World War II. This is crazy," the receptionist replied.

"Crazy?" I said, "I know of no stopwatch for war. During the Civil War, both sides expected it to last just a few weeks, no more than a few months. During the Revolutionary War, Gen. George Washington lost battle after battle such that some wanted him replaced by a more competent general. The early years of World War II seemed particularly gloomy, but President Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn't say, Well, we've been at this for a bit. Let's call it a day and go home.'"

That was too much for a guy sitting in the waiting room, who chimed in, "But the war has made things worse."

So now, I am getting it from all sides.

Turning to the gentleman, I said, "I guess you assume that everything was going swimmingly until Bush stuck a stick into the hornet's nest. Do you remember the 1979 seizure of American hostages, who were held for over 400 days? Do you remember the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia? Do you remember the attack on the Marine barracks during the Reagan Administration, or the attacks on our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya? What about the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993? Not to mention the attack on 9-11 that killed over 3,000 on U.S. soil. Yeah, if only Bush hadn't ticked off so many people, the Disney Company, by now, would've built a theme park in Pakistan."

And so it went. To paraphrase Osama bin Laden, if we lose the war in Iraq, it will not be lost on the battlefield, but in places like my doctor's office.

"Mr. Elder," said the nurse's assistant, "the doctor will see you now." And not a moment too soon -- for them.

Freaking outstanding.

Townhall.com 

[T]he affidavit he filed in the Miller appeal was a model of misdirection and disingenuousness clearly designed to mislead the Court. Taken as a whole, the affidavit conflates the Armitage leak to Novak with Libby's quite apparently innocent conversations with other reporters, presenting a materially false impression of the facts the prosecution already had determined. Whether Libby's recollections of those conversations were accurate, or his conversational partners' recollections were more accurate, both sides to each conversation recall something entirely benign.

I ask you to focus attention in particular on paragraphs 9-17 and 81 of that affidavit and read them in light of recently revealed facts: that Armitage told Novak and Woodward earlier and in far greater detail about Plame's role and identity than did Lewis Libby or Karl Rove who were pilloried for three years for innocent, passing comments to reporters who asked THEM about information, reporters who already  seem to have  known  about Plame's identity due to the indiscretions of Plame and Wilson. From these facts alone it is readily apparent that these reporters already knew about Plame's employment and her relationship to Wilson.  These obvious facts should have lead an unbiased investigator or prosecutor to examine the source of that knowledge--whether it was due to the well documented indiscretions of Plame and Wilson themselves or whether, like the leak to Novak, their knowledge derived from conversations with Richard Armitage.  
 
Significantly, Mr. Fitzgerald's reference to a Newsday article suggesting that Plame fell within the IIPA failed to note that the source(s) for those claims were Wilson allies in the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group which ironically was urging intelligence officers to leak classified information. Even more ironically some of them reportedly are connected through interlinked organizational ties with Mr. Agee, whose own deliberate revelations of undercover CIA agents was the very impetus for the Statute. At no time in the unredacted portions of the affidavit did Fitzgerald directly say that Plame met the test of the IIPA - which she clearly does not -but in various ways he deliberately left the Court with that impression in order to effect the rare contempt order and jailing of a reporter.
 
Further, while portions of the affidavit remain redacted, it doesn't appear that the Prosecution was adequately forthcoming to the Court in revealing that the disclosure to Novak was by someone who did not get that information from Libby or Judith Miller. Indeed, Miller herself may have received it from Armitage as well. Her notes reflect other sources, prior to the June 23 meeting with Libby and she had in the recent past written interviews with Armitage. Fitzgerald's grand jury interrogation of her respecting those sources, moreover, seems to conflict with the agreement he'd reached with her not to ask about sources other than Libby.

Footnote 15, p. 28 of this filing was markedly misleading.

"If Libby knowingly disclosed information about Plame's status with the CIA, Libby would appear to have violated Title 18, USC Sec. 793 if the information is considered information respecting the national defense. In order to establish a violation of Title 50, USCSec.421, it would be necessary to establish that Libby knew or believed that Plame was a person whose identity the CIA was making specific efforts to conceal and who had carried out covert work overseas within the last 5 years. To date we have no direct evidence that Libby knew or believed Wilson's wife was engaged in covert work."

That it is so is clear from this portion of Judge Tatel's opinion in that case.

"Addressing deficiencies of proof regarding the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the special counsel refers to Plame as person whose identity the CIA was making specific efforts to conceal and who had carried out covert work overseas within the last 5 years -representations I trust the special counsel would not make without support. [Emphasis added]." 

There is no indication on the record that the Prosecutor informed the Court that this was a misreading of the affidavit he submitted.

His demand and the D.C. Circuit ruling set a precedent that may well encourage other prosecutors to force journalists to betray their sources too. His effort also appeared, at least to us, to violate long-standing Justice Department guidelines concerning such pursuit of journalists. His pursuit is all the more puzzling in retrospect because we now know that Mr. Fitzgerald already knew--at the time he was demanding that the reporters betray their sources--that the real leaker was Richard Armitage, not Mr. Libby.

The two reporters he subpoenaed and their lawyers did not know this at the time, however, and if they had it might have changed their arguments or decisions. At a minimum, prosecutors and reporters deserve to know what evidence the D.C. Circuit found so compelling so we can all avoid such future collisions. Congress also has an interest now that it is contemplating a "shield law" to protect media sources.

In his reply to the DJ-AP motion, Mr. Fitzgerald tries to hide behind rule 6(e) of grand jury secrecy. He claims the integrity of grand juries will be compromised by the release. But much of the material was already disclosed during the Libby trial, if not leaked earlier. And the far larger risk to grand jury integrity would be if Mr. Fitzgerald misled the courts about what he knew and when he knew it in order to coerce the two reporters to testify."

BRUSSELS, April 3 (RIA Novosti) - The government of Belgium's French-speaking region of Wallonia, which has a population of about 4 million, has approved a tax on barbequing, local media reported.

Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, is emitted during barbequing. Beginning June 2007, residents of Wallonia will have to pay 20 euros for a grilling session.

The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.

*Boggle*

How much CO2 is released by the damn HELICOPTERS?

You human-caused global warming fanatics have gone completely mental.  

Link

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The early onset of Daylight Savings Time in the United States this year may have been for naught.

The move to turn the clocks forward by an hour on March 11 rather than the usual early April date was mandated by the U.S. government as an energy-saving effort.

But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power usage.

"We haven't seen any measurable impact," said Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co., one of the nation's largest power companies, echoing comments from several large utilities.

That may come as no surprise to the Energy Department, which last year predicted only modest energy savings because the benefits of the later daylight hour would be offset.

For example, households may draw less electricity for lights at night, but will use more power in the early in the day as they wake to darker and chillier mornings.

Residential lighting comprises only about 10 percent of the average homeowner's electricity use, while air conditioners, heaters and refrigerators consume much more power. Washers, dryers and plasma televisions are also bigger users of electricity than lighting.

Just as I suspected.

Reuters