Groonk's Newsmine 2.0

There will be a "total evacuation of the city. We have to. The city will not be functional for two or three months," Nagin said. And he said people will not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two.

Nagin estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people remained in New Orleans, a city of nearly half a million. He said 14,000 to 15,000 a day could be evacuated.

The
Pentagon, meanwhile, began mounting one of the largest search-and-rescue operations in U.S. history, sending four Navy ships with drinking water and other emergency supplies, along with the hospital ship USNS Comfort, search helicopters and elite SEAL water-rescue teams.
American Red Cross workers from across the country converged on the devastated region in the agency's biggest-ever relief operation.

[...]

With the streets awash and looters brazenly cleaning out stores with law enforcement officers too busy to do anything about it, authorities planned to move at least 25,000 of New Orleans' storm refugees to the Astrodome in a vast, two-day caravan of some 475 buses.

Many of the city's refugees — 15,000 to 20,000 people — were in the Superdome, which had become hot and stuffy, with broken toilets and nowhere for anyone to bathe. "It can no longer operate as a shelter of last resort," the mayor said.

"The [computers] need at least three months to get to know each other before an animator goes anywhere near them," says McKean. "I learned that computers are as human as the rest of us. Our technical director named all the machines after different bands. The four Macs in the edit suite were named after the Beatles; fair enough, I was John. But then we needed a fifth so he named it Yoko, and they all stopped talking to each other."

The new messaging and internet phone service, called Google Talk, is designed to break down the walls between different instant messaging systems. Normally, these services these only let users chat with others on the same network.

According to Harik, Google Talk will connect users of different instant messaging services using software packages – called Jabber and Trillion – which are designed to act as a cyber switchboard.

This capability has the potential to make instant messaging as interoperable as email or regular telephone services, allowing anyone to contact anyone else with an account or a phone, says Harik.

He attributes this anatomical change to the invention of rugged shoes, that reduced our need for strong, flexible toes to grip and balance.

The research is presented in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The development of footwear appears to have affected the four so-called "lesser" toes - excepting the big toe.

[...]

"The oldest shoes in the world are about 9,000 years old, and they're from California," said Professor Trinkaus, of Washington University in St Louis, US.

The new program, Google Talk, will compete against similar free services offered for several years by America Online Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. All are vying to increase their presence on PCs to boost online ad revenue and name recognition. (MSNBC is a Microsoft - NBC joint venture.)

Jon Stewart: Sure. But how much do you need TV to be available in convenient form? It already is convenient - we have the DVR. Do you need TV on your watch as you walk from your cell phone to your BlackBerry? At what point do we get saturated enough to say, "OK, I get it! We can get anything we want at any time! Let's go sit around a large table and eat a meal in silence"? Sometimes this shit's just overkill.

The story is told with Brown's trademark expressive drawings and juxtaposition of humor and heartache.

-- 224 pages, 4" x 6"

The special-edition Star Trek Communicator Phone is part of the ramping-up of events and promotions tied to the 40th anniversary of the Star Trek franchise next year. But the timing was also right because "the technology is better now," said Sandi Isaacs, VP of interactive at Viacom Consumer Products. "With the prior generations of handsets and mobiles, it was really hard to give consumers a rich experience."

Viacom and Sona are still finalizing details of the look and features that the communicator phone, due in stores Sept. 30, will sport. But fans can expect the devices to chirp and beep with ringtones that mimic the familiar sounds of the communicators used in the Star Trek TV series and movies.

Using the control tablet Rizzo calls the "Wizard of Oz" box, a clinician can select any number of environments -- urban war zone, deserted highway, crowded bazaar -- depending on where a patient's initial trauma event occurred.

The control interface can add or silence the sound of gunshots, or flood an area with blasts and smoke. Stress-inducing factors can be increased or decreased, depending on patients' physiological reactions -- and how they say they are doing.

"We're going to integrate a smell machine, to bring people back to places they've been before," said Rizzo. "We're building a collection. We already have burning rubber, diesel fuel, body odor, garbage and Iraqi spices."

Virtual-reality therapies have been used by some mental health providers since the 1990s to treat phobias. The idea of using it to treat PTSD has a predecessor in Virtual Vietnam, a project conducted by Georgia Tech University researchers in 1997 with a group of Vietnam veterans.

"But never before have we applied it this early," said Cmdr. Russell Shilling, the Office of Naval Research program officer credited with initiating the current project.

"When VR therapy was used with Vietnam veterans, it was applied more than 20 years later," said Shilling. "Here, we're trying to catch people right as they come home, and eventually we'd like to apply it while they're still in the theater."

One of the patients Spira worked with in the VR therapy trial was a Marine sniper, the sole survivor of an attack in which he witnessed at close range the violent deaths of fellow squad members.

"One of them was cut in half, literally, with machine-gun fire. (My patient) ran out on impulse to help him, and was shot in the arm and leg. He picked up the body, scooped up the intestines, brought him back to their vehicle as the guy looked up at him and spoke, dying. His squad truck headed back with them for safety, and was then hit by IED (improvised explosive device), which killed everyone but him."

The Marine was rescued and transported to a hospital, and eventually returned to the United States, where he started VR treatment with Spira.

"Snipers are very tough in general, and during the session, he kept saying, 'I'm fine.' But I had him hooked up with physiological monitors, and when I asked him to tell the story of what happened, his system went through the roof.

"He flew out of his wheelchair in public once, and started pounding on a guy who said we shouldn't be in Iraq," Spira said. "But over time, as the therapy continued, he became calmer and was able to get along with people better."

[...]

Cell-phone comics use a technology called Comic Surfing, which takes viewers through manga stories at a carefully calculated speed and sequence.The manga frames are specially formatted to fit on tiny mobile phone screens. Pop-up frames and vibration during action scenes add to the drama. Cell-phone comics with preprogrammed sound effects are also coming soon.

Japan plans to make this futuristic television a commercial reality by 2020 as part of a broad national project that will bring together researchers from the government, technology companies and academia.

The targeted "virtual reality" television would allow people to view high-definition images in 3D from any angle, in addition to being able to touch and smell the objects being projected upwards from a screen parallel to the floor.

Peyroux's voice has been compared to Billie Holiday, with the potential to become one of the biggest-selling artists of the year.

[...]

"She is that rare thing, an artist more interested in her music than in the glitz and glamour of showbusiness."

"They had found it in my pocket at the airport, and they thought it was suspicious. It's shaped like a star, and they were looking at the metal edges of it, like it was a weapon. I asked for it back, but they kept handing it to each other and inspecting it. I was told to move to a separate area.

"I told them — just turn it over. The engraving on the back explains everything. But they thought they must have something potentially dangerous here.

"I told them exactly what it was — I said, 'That's my Congressional Medal of Honor.´"

"We have customers who know exactly what they want and come at all hours to get it," said Xavier Chambon, president of Maxi-Livres, a low-cost publisher and book store chain that debuted the vending machines in June. "It's as if our stores were open 24 hours a day."

Stocked with 25 of Maxi-Livres best-selling titles, the machines cover the gamut of literary genres and tastes. Classics like "The Odyssey" by Homer and Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" share the limited shelf space with such practical must-haves as "100 Delicious Couscous" and "Verb Conjugations."

"Our biggest vending machine sellers are 'The Wok Cookbook' and a French-English dictionary," said Chambon, who added that poet Charles Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" - "The Flowers of Evil" - also is "very popular."

Regardless of whether they fall into the category of high culture or low, all books cost a modest $2.45.

In a brief statement, publicist Dennis Dennehy said the star was "in the hospital under doctors' care".

Richardson looked and acted the part. While other officials in Vietnam dressed in fatigues or short sleeves, he always wore a black business suit. Scholarly, a little ponderous in his manner and speech, he kept a copy of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, his favorite Stoic emperor, by his side. "I do my duty," wrote Aurelius. "Other things do not trouble me."

The crocodile's immune system is much more powerful than that of humans, preventing life-threatening infections after savage territorial fights which often leave the animals with gaping wounds and missing limbs.

"They tear limbs off each other and despite the fact that they live in this environment with all these microbes, they heal up very rapidly and normally, almost always without infection," said Mark Merchant, an American scientist who has been taking crocodile blood samples in the Northern Territory.

[...]

The scientists hope to collect enough crocodile blood to isolate the powerful antibodies and eventually develop an antibiotic for use by humans.

"We may be able to have antibiotics that you take orally," Merchant said. " Potentially also antibiotics that you could run topically on wounds, say diabetic ulcer wounds. Burn patients often have their skin infected and things like that."

However, the crocodile's immune system may be too powerful for humans and may need to be synthesized for human consumption.

Scientist Fabiano Ximenes, 31, dug through two Sydney dumps to find out how long wood and paper products survive in landfill sites.

He found that magazines, newspapers and old bits of wood thrown away up to 46 years ago were in almost perfect condition, with pornography lasting the best of all.

He displayed a 1979 copy of the men's magazine Playboy which was in near mint condition, and said its thick wax coating could be the reason for its longevity.

"The best preserved was the pornography," Mr Ximenes said.

Taking a step toward bridging the so-called digital divide between the tech-savvy and people who can't afford computers, the city government on Tuesday issued guidelines for a plan to "ensure universal, affordable wireless broadband access for all San Franciscans."

The invitation, extended to nonprofit groups and businesses that could eventually bid on the project, puts San Francisco among a handful of major U.S. cities tackling the technological and political challenges of offering Internet service to its residents on such a wide scale.

The profits will go to the First Amendment Project, which defends the free speech rights of activists, writers and artists.

"It feels a little scary for most writers because when you're writing you're completely in charge. You can say this book is all mine, it's my world," said Chabon, who sits on the project's board. "Whether giving some of that over has any monetary value or not, we'll see."

Military Funding:
"I am a huge supporter of the military. I have always thought of them as our guardians, and when our guardians are making less than the poverty line, and children are suffering because their parents decided to join the military, well, I get very upset. I feel that instead of sending billions to the Pentagon's pet projects, it should go to the troops."

Stem Cell Research:
"I'd met Chris Reeve several times before he died, and after having met him it is tough to be against [stem cell research]. I am for human knowledge and expansion of human life. If stem cells are one way to do that, I cannot support legislation to restrict this potentially life-saving research."

_The light of the disk is endless
like the light of the disks in the sky, sun and moon.

With a single push of our finger on a button
We pull up the shining gems of text_

-Gelek Rinpoche

The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades.

[...]

Six weeks ago, E&P broke the story that articles written by famed Chicago Daily News war correspondent George Weller about the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki were finally published, in Japan, almost six decades after they had been spiked by U.S. officials. This drew national attention, but suppressing film footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was even more significant, as this country rushed into the nuclear age with its citizens having neither a true understanding of the effects of the bomb on human beings, nor why the atomic attacks drew condemnation around the world.

[...]

More recently, McGovern declared that Americans should have seen the damage wrought by the bomb. "The main reason it was classified was ... because of the horror, the devastation," he said. Because the footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hidden for so long, the atomic bombings quickly sank, unconfronted and unresolved, into the deeper recesses of American awareness, as a costly nuclear arms race, and nuclear proliferation, accelerated.

The atomic cover-up also reveals what can happen in any country that carries out deadly attacks on civilians in any war and then keeps images of what occurred from its own people.

Ten years ago, I co-authored (with Robert Jay Lifton) the book "Hiroshima in America," and new material has emerged since. On Aug. 6, and on following days, the Sundance cable channel will air "Original Child Bomb," a prize-winning documentary on which I worked. The film includes some of the once-censored footage -- along with home movies filmed by McGovern in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Unable to digest the coffee beans the Luwak graciously deposits them on the jungle floor where they are eagerly collected by the locals.

The stomach acids and enzymatic action involved in this unique fermentation process produces the beans for the world’s rarest coffee beverage.

IAN MCDIARMID
Execute order 66.

CLONE TROOPER
Kill all shrieking CGI creatures.
(to his troops)
Alright men, shoot down the giant Iguana.

IAN MCDIARMID
Oh, and order 67.

CLONE TROOPER
Jedi, too. Got it.

They shoot at EWAN, who falls into the water.

CLONE TROOPER
He's dead. Nobody could have survived that fall. Except a Jedi, of course.

EWAN MCGREGOR
Jesus, they've become really
stupid. This movie really DOES
bridge the gap between the original
trilogy and the prequel trilogy.

EXT. MYGEETO

Suddenly, all of the clone troopers turn against
KI-ADI-MUNDI and shoot him.

KI-ADI-MUNDI
Oh no, I'm being shot by fewer
weapons than at the end of Attack of
the Clones! Somehow, this overpowers
me!
(dies)

CLONE TROOPERS kill all remaining JEDI all over the galaxy,
including the BLUE HOTTIE. Despite their supernatural senses
and a lifetime of training in battle skills, they all
succumb to the TROOPERS. Meanwhile, HAYDEN travels to
MUSTAFAR to kill all of the separatists. JAR JAR, sadly, is
not one of them.

"He was a warm and loving and surprisingly sentimental man," said Ted Koppel, a longtime friend and fellow anchor.

Jennings deeply regretted not finishing school, and he would have wanted that lesson passed along, Koppel said. He made up for it by becoming a student of the world, studying cultures and their people for the rest of his life.

"No one could ad lib like Peter," said Barbara Walters. "Sometimes he drove me crazy because he knew so many details.

"He just died much too young."

[...]

(from another article)
Mr Jennings, famed for his international reporting experience, was not afraid of squaring up to challenging and difficult questions.

"I subscribe to leaving people with essentially - sorry it's a cliche - a rough draft of history. Some days it's reassuring, some days it's absolutely destructive," he said.

The Daily Mail, quoting findings published in the specialist magazine

NeuroImage, said researchers at Sheffield university in northern England discovered startling differences in the way the brain responds to male and female sounds.

Men deciphered female voices using the auditory part of the brain that processes music, while male voices engaged a simpler mechanism, it said.

The Mail quoted researcher Michael Hunter as saying, "The female voice is actually more complex than the male voice, due to differences in the size and shape of the vocal cords and larynx between men and women, and also due to women having greater natural 'melody' in their voices.

"This causes a more complex range of sound frequencies than in a male voice."

The findings may help explain why people suffering hallucinations usually hear male voices, the report added, as the brain may find it much harder to conjure up a false female voice accurately than a false male voice.

So I've put up my third ever published short story -- it's about 23 years old. It's juvenilia, but I hope not entirely without interest, about a murder in NurseryLand, and is one of the very few hardboiled detective stories I've written. Presenting Little Jack Horner, private eye, in The Case of the Four And Twenty Blackbirds. http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/4&20.asp

It was reprinted in ANGELS AND VISITATIONS, and in a handful of anthologies, but wasn't in Smoke and Mirrors, so it will probably be new to many of you.

One of the puppies died soon after birth but the other, an Afghan hound named Snuppy, is still doing well after 16 weeks, the researchers say.

Snuppy joins a host of other cloned animals including Dolly the sheep, CC the cat and Ralph the rat.

Scientists hope dog clones will help them understand and treat a range of serious human diseases.

"It's really remarkable how often you get accosted," said Goldberg, 39. "There are the medical questions from family and friends, and then there are the drunk and outrageous questions where somebody wants to drop their pants and show you a rash or something."

The book, subtitled, "Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini," (Three Rivers Press), is co-authored by humorist Mark Leyner.

"People tend to know so little about their bodies as compared to their cars or their laptops," said Leyner, 49, of Hoboken, New Jersey. "When I worked in a pharmacy in Washington, D.C., people would ask me medical questions all the time. I was just a 22-year-old cashier at Rite Aid."

Susan Torres, whose plight has attracted support from around the world, gave birth to a daughter Tuesday by Caesarean section. The delivery went smoothly and the baby "is doing well," her brother-in-law, Justin Torres, wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. Susan Anne Catherine Torres weighs 1 pound, 13 ounces and is 13 1/2 inches long, he said.

"So why not just say we're dorks?"

There was a time when teens who tried something like that would have been asking for some serious goofing. But today being smart and sensitive, even a little socially awkward, is often considered cool -- and the signs are everywhere.

"The O.C.," a TV show popular with teens, has Seth, a comic-book loving nerd played by actor Adam Brody. Bands such as Weezer also feed off the dork image, complete with horn-rimmed glasses and a song about being OK with not fitting the Beverly Hills mold. "Napoleon Dynamite" has a fan club; its Web site claims 150,000 members.

And, increasingly, people are parading around in shirts that say "Dork Pride!" among other things. Such items have gotten so popular that CafePress.com, an online merchandiser, has created a special category for shirts and other items celebrating geeks, dorks and nerds.

"A legend involves the past," she said. "I don't like categories. This one is great and that one is great.

"The word great stands for something," she added. "When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise."

Sgt. Horn, 25, a native of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., acknowledges he had little interest in the region before coming here. But a local sheik friendly to U.S. forces, Mohammed Ismail Ahmed, explained the inner workings of rural Iraqi society on one of Sgt. Horn's first Humvee patrols.

Sgt. Horn says he was intrigued, and started making a point of stopping by all the villages, all but one dominated by Sunni Arabs, to talk with people about their life and security problems.

Moreover, he pressed for development projects in the area. He boasts that he helped funnel $136,000 worth of aid into the area. Part of that paid for delivery of clean water to 30 villages during the broiling summer months.

"They saw that we were interested in them, instead of just taking care of the bases," Sgt. Horn said.

[...]

"Ninety percent of the people in my area are shepherds or simple townspeople," said Sgt. Horn. "They simply want to find a decent job to make enough money to provide food and a stable place for their people to live."

To Sgt. Horn's commanders, his success justifies his unorthodox approach: No rockets have hit their base in the past half year.

"He has developed a great relationship with local leaders," said Lt. Col. Bradley Becker, who commands the 2nd Battalion, 8th Field Artillery Regiment. "They love him. They're not going to let anyone shoot at Sheik Horn."

She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner.

She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe.

Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University says one day robots could fool us into believing they are human.

Repliee Q1 is not like any robot you will have seen before, at least outside of science-fiction movies.

She is designed to look human and although she can only sit at present, she has 31 actuators in her upper body, powered by a nearby air compressor, programmed to allow her to move like a human.