Re: Interesting little tidbit
Julia Thompson wrote: Sometime earlier this year, I'd stumbled across a webpage that listed all the mascots used by Texas high schools, giving the number of schools having each mascot. At the very bottom of the page was the list of unique mascots. Hippo was on that list. Someone told my mom that Hutto is the *only* high school in the entire US with the Hippo as their mascot. Can anyone refute this? I'd be interested in knowing if it's true. I found a page *supporting* the statement; it may be the source for the person who told my mother about the uniqueness: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/6472388.htm There is some discussion of the legend of why the hippo was adopted as the mascot. And the article mentions Nolan Ryan, if anyone cares about *that* detail. (He's a major owner in the minor league team that plays a few miles west of the high school, but that's not why he's mentioned.) Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Interesting little tidbit
Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 06:52 AM 8/27/03 -0500, Julia Thompson wrote: Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 03:24 PM 8/26/03 -0500, Julia Thompson wrote: Sometime earlier this year, I'd stumbled across a webpage that listed all the mascots used by Texas high schools, giving the number of schools having each mascot. At the very bottom of the page was the list of unique mascots. Hippo was on that list. Someone told my mom that Hutto is the *only* high school in the entire US with the Hippo as their mascot. Can anyone refute this? I'd be interested in knowing if it's true. Julia incubating two future Hippos I bet you feel like they already are . . . No, right now, *I* feel like the hippo. :) That's not quite right. Hippos don't waddle the way I do. More like a lead penguin. (But not a cast-iron penguin -- lead is softer) Just wait . . . in another few weeks, you can be the prize in a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos . . . Only if we don't lose the marbles ;) Julia who feels like she's losing *hers* at times, but it hasn't been *that* bad lately ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Book Reccomendations
With the growing presence of Mars I've become more interested in Astronomy as of late. What are some good books on the subject that has both breadth and depth, more than my ASTRO 001 Intro to Astronomy textbook? Damon. Damon Agretto [EMAIL PROTECTED] Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. Now Building: Tamiya's M26 Pershing ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Why extra virgin olive oil is so healthy
--- Ticia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jan Coffey wrote: --- Ticia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... From newsletter Zone Diet Weekly Tip from Dr. Barry Sears Zone bars are adictive. I had one for breakfast every morning for a week. The next day I ran out and had eggs and a bit of tuna. By the second day of being zone free I was having cravings so strong I left work to go buy a box. Try a breakfast of fruit (apple, pear, peach, sometimes the less good banana) and cottage cheese, I'm addicted to *that*! You also need to eat some nuts with that for the right fats... I make my own oatmeal almond muffins which are easy to snatch along on my morning commute together with my 'prepared earlier' tupperware box of fruit + extra cottage cheese (to compensate for the oatmeal sugar in the muffin). Yummm. Energy boost right through to lunch. :)) That's just ~way~ too many carbs for me. Oats and Wheat can make it hard to concentrate. All those carbs in the fruit and I am ready to jump around. Good on a weekend when I will be spending the whole day active, but on a weekday at the office carbs are for after work when the evening is to be spent on the water, or in the gym. = _ Jan William Coffey _ __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: mongomery protestor demographics
--- The Fool [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2003_08_24_dneiwert_archive.html#106179567260601299 Behind the tablets snip One guy had a sign that read, The 10 Commandments or... then, on the other side, The 10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto. Now, there's a choice! snip Better yet, the first ten rules of the Sharia (?sp?), or ten koans, or The Druid's Creed... snort My understanding of the First A' is that you have the right to plop down a 2-ton monument of the Ten Commandments in your own front yard - unless your homeowner's association disallows it! :P Debbi cupping her ears for a certain Chihuahua's Eeediot! ;) __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: BBC to put television show archive online
Jean-Louis Couturier wrote: I sense an imminent _Dr Who_ binge. And _Neverwhere_ and _Red Dwarf_ and _Hitch Hiker's Guide_ and... This was all I could see when I saw the subject line. No matter how I tried to read the subject, all I could see was access to ... As a secondary thought, there are some seriously cool documentary series in that archive as well. But a question for our UK comrades, were shows with a more commercial orientation such as The Professionals, Makepeace Dempsey et al made by the BBC, or were they made by third party production companies and simply shown on BBC? Cheers Russell C. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: BBC to put television show archive online
Jean-Louis Couturier wrote: Matt wrote: It looks like we'll be able to download all our favorite old BBC shows! I sense an imminent _Dr Who_ binge. And _Neverwhere_ and _Red Dwarf_ and _Hitch Hiker's Guide_ and... Strange timing, considering that Neverwhere is being released on DVD September 9. *Adds to Christmas list* Jim ___ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web! ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
secret that keeps French slim
http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,2763,1028800,00.html Scientists have another solution for the notorious French paradox - the riddle of how a nation of alcohol-quaffing, croissant-munching gourmands stays healthy and slim, while a disproportionate number of health-obsessed Americans are obese and at cardiovascular risk. The answer, after methodical study of brasseries, eateries, pizza parlours, Chinese restaurants and Hard Rock cafes in both countries, is simple: the French eat less of everything. And they eat less because they are served smaller portions. The French paradox has baffled European and US scientists for more than a decade. Only 7% of the French are obese, compared with a whopping 22% of all Americans. Coronary heart disease is the biggest killer in the US, but not in France. Yet the French smoke Gitanes, breakfast on buttery brioche, lunch and dine off confit of duck, sausage, fat goose livers and camembert. They drink wine, round off their meals with cognac, and while away the afternoon with strong coffee and mouthwatering pastries. ... Mean portion size across all Paris establishments was 277g (9.8oz), compared with an average in Philadelphia of 346g (12.2oz) - about 25% more. Only in the Hard Rock Cafe chain did the Parisian portions match the US ones. Philadelphia's Chinese restaurants served 72% more than the Parisian ones. A supermarket soft drink in the US was 52% larger, a hotdog 63% larger, a carton of yoghurt 82% larger. The lesson is that though the French diet was rich in fat, overall, the Americans consumed more calories. Over the years, this would lead to substantial differences in weight. If food is moderately palatable, people tend to consume what is put in front of them, and generally consume more when offered more food, said Paul Rozin, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Much discussion of the obesity epidemic in the US has focused on personal willpower, but our study shows that the environment also plays an important role, and that people may be satisfied even if served less than they would normally eat. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ Aerospace is plumbing with the volume turned up. - John Carmack ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Creative spam
Deborah Harrell wrote: Lo, these many years ago, in college Organic Chemistry, I and a friend created the 'O-chem Personality Wheel,' with categories from Ortho-normal (your basic staid and sedate microbiology major) on to Para-normal (included mushroom-tea drinkers) and Epi-normal (off-the-ringers who were fun at parties but not invited to all-night study/gossip sessions); Abi-normals were of course those too weird to relate even to DDers or SCAers! ;D Debbi Meta-normal Herself Maru :) I give, what does meta-normal mean then? ---David Gram-Schmidt Orthonormalization? ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: mongomery protestor demographics
On Wednesday, August 27, 2003, at 09:08 pm, The Fool wrote: Meanwhile, in the crowd was our good friend Neal Horsley, along with his scary sidekick, Jonathan Toole. The First Freedom, Olaf Childress' patently racist (and now anti-Semitic, complete with references to the Jew World Order) and neo-Confederate paper, was being handed out, along with a variety of radical anti-abortion tracts and even several pieces of literature attacking Catholics (papists, etc.). One guy had a sign that read, The 10 Commandments or... then, on the other side, The 10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto. Now, there's a choice! Overall, the whole thing has had the flavor of a New Yorker cartoon, the classic depicting a guy with a long white beard and a sign screaming REPENT! Lots of sackcloths and ashes, etc. Trucks with giant photos of aborted fetuses, another one painted all over with Irwin Schiff anti-tax propaganda. Of course, the chief extremist in all of this is Roy Moore. Mark also informs me that Hutton Gibson was in the crowd. I also gather that Flip Benham of Operation Rescue notoriety has been hanging out in Montgomery. Among the other extremist participants: -- W.N. Otwell, who leads camouflage-garbed protesters at abortion clinics and who has protested race-mixing, calling America a white man's country. -- Greg Dixon, the leader of the extremist Indianapolis Baptist Temple. -- Michael Hill, president of the neo-Confederate (and definitively racist, not to mention openly secessionist) League of the South. -- John Cripps, a noted neo-Confederate. Yes, but their beliefs make them happier and healthier, so that's OK then :) -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible. - Bertrand Russell ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Global Warming
At 03:16 PM 8/27/2003 -0700, you wrote: --- William T Goodall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns4072 Europe may be breathing a sigh of relief as its record-breaking heatwave eases, but there is still plenty to worry about. Temperature changes caused by global warming are likely to transform agriculture on both sides of the Atlantic snip The eastern and western seaboards of the US will become much wetter over the next century, while some central states will become so starved of water that they will be unable to support agriculture at all. I'd guessed it from our drought -- Colorado is one of the places forecast to become more arid in this report: But Kansas, Colorado and Nebraska are just some of the central states that could suffer drought, the researchers say in two papers published in June this year (Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, vol 117, p 73 and p 97). So, are the idiot developers still putting in Kentucky bluegrass lawns instead of native prairie grasses? -oh, yeah. :/ Debbi Seems This Year's European Grape Harvest Is Good However Maru (not that i drink enough wine for it to matter to me maru) :P Colorado and Nebraksa? You mean the states that have active sand dunes? Now how could sand be there, if drought is caused by global warming? Could it be natural hundred and thousand year cycles causing drought and wet conditions? Nah, that's too easy (and there's no money to be made off of it). http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/drought/drght_data.html Kevin T. - VRWC How dry I am... ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
always follow the money, esp. Scaife's money
'Arkansas Project' Led to Turmoil and Rifts Washington Post Staff Sunday, May 2, 1999; Page A24 The Arkansas Project that did so much to increase the visibility of Richard Mellon Scaife caused great turmoil at the American Spectator magazine. It skirted close to the tax laws, and failed to learn damaging information about Bill and Hillary Clinton. According to R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., founder and editor of the American Spectator, the idea for investigating the Clintons was born on a fishing trip on the Chesapeake Bay that he took in the fall of 1993. Those on board the chartered boat, Tyrrell remembered, included Richard M. Larry, Scaife's senior aide for many years, David Henderson, a conservative activist and public relations adviser close to Larry, and Steven Boynton, a Washington attorney and outdoorsman. Henderson and Boynton both had contacts in Arkansas they thought could help them get to the bottom of the Clinton scandals. Through the Junior Chamber of Commerce, Henderson had met David Hale, a Little Rock lawyer and political figure who became prominent in the Whitewater affair after accusing then-Gov. Clinton of pressuring him to make an improper $300,000, federally backed loan that went bad. Among the people Boynton knew in the state was the owner of a bait shop in Hot Springs, Parker Dozhier, a rabid Clinton hater. Tyrrell described the Arkansas Project as an attempt by the Spectator, best known for its acerbic and lively commentary, to get into more investigative reporting. Henderson agreed. But other well-placed sources have told The Post that Larry, Scaife's aide, tried to sell the idea of investigating Clinton's activities in his home state to at least two other organizations before the Spectator took on the project. Both turned Larry down, the sources said. Several sources at the Spectator, all of whom asked for anonymity, said they thought Tyrrell had agreed to undertake the investigation to please Larry and Scaife, the magazine's most generous supporter since 1970. Scaife had given the magazine at least $3.3 million. Under the tax law, Scaife's foundations could not sponsor their own investigation of Clinton. They had to give money to a registered nonprofit organization (a 501[c][3] organization in the jargon of the IRS), which could use the money for a legitimate nonprofit purpose. The American Spectator Foundation, which publishes the magazine, qualified to receive the money. Investigating a president provided it wasn't tied to a specific electoral campaign would fall within the definition of legal activity by a nonprofit, according to Frances Hill, a specialist in the law of tax-exempt organizations who teaches at the University of Miami. The law also says that a foundation cannot use a 501[c][3] organization to funnel money to someone the foundation is trying to help directly. Larry's apparent effort to find a home for a project run by Henderson and Boynton might raise questions under this provision, though Spectator officials said the IRS has not said anything about it. (Henderson said he had never heard of Larry trying to persuade other organizations to undertake the Arkansas Project and doubted this was true.) A third legal question raised by the project involves payments to Henderson, a member of the Spectator board. Under the federal law on nonprofits, it is illegal for a member of the board of a nonprofit organization to receive excessive payments from the organization the law calls this inurement. Over the 3½-year life of the Arkansas Project, Henderson was paid $477,000, according to an accounting drawn up by Boynton in 1997. In an interview, Henderson said the Spectator's lawyers and board of directors considered the inurement question and concluded that the payments to him were proper. He also defended the project, saying it produced more information on the Clintons than the Spectator used. There were a number of big stories that we developed pretty far that met some resistance at the magazine, he said, including stories later confirmed and published elsewhere. He declined to specify what they were. Boynton received at least $577,000. Much of the rest of the project money went to private investigators, according to Spectator documents provided by Charles Thompson, an independent television producer. One of those employed by Henderson and Boynton was Rex Armistead, now nearly 70, a longtime Mississippi state policeman, undercover operative and, in recent years, private eye. According to the Spectator documents, Armistead was paid at least $353,517 by the Arkansas Project. What he did for that money is far from clear. The project was launched late in 1994 and got underway in January 1995. This was the month the Spectator published a piece by staff writer David Brock reporting Arkansas state troopers' accounts of how they had arranged illicit trysts for Clinton when he was governor. In future history books, Brock's piece will probably be
Re: [KillerBzzz] Virus count
At 10:35 PM 8/26/2003 -0500, you wrote: At 10:19 PM 8/26/03 -0400, Kevin Tarr wrote: I got my deer head mount back today, the cat is not impressed. How did (s)he react? -- Ronn! :) insert boring story First, the cat has spent 90% of this summer in the basement. It's not cooler down there, at least I don't think so. Maybe the whirring ACs scare him. Second, I'm sleeping in the attic. The cat used to come up every night and sleep on the bed, or the couch, or the floor in front of the stairs. Now a week can go by and I won't see him. This is the normal routine. I open the door to the house, and soon the cat comes from the basement for a few minutes, then disappears again. I carried in a few things before the deer head. I propped the screen door open and the cat came to sniff the air. He never goes outside, I've carried him out the back door once and dropped him; he ran around to the front door to get back in. I pulled the deer head out of the car and swung around to the house. When I came up the steps he ran farther into the house, a normal response. I came in and closed the door, then kneeled down with the mount, calling the cat over. He approached with his tail straight up, at 20% fluff. He came to my hand, but his eyes were on the deer the whole time. I gave a few head scratches, but as soon as I moved more, he ran to the next room swishing his tail, then stopped and looked back. I propped the head on the couch, I don't have a nail to hang it on yet. The rest of the afternoon the cat never left me, except when I went upstairs. The couch is next to the stairs. I went to work. When I came back that night, the cat was already in the living room instead of the basement. I had the mount sitting so it was basically facing straight up, I doubted from cat level you'd notice it. I set it down on the couch like it would hang on a wall, so my brother would see it when he came home. I did a few things and went to bed. During the night the cat came up and was all over the bed, meowing at me. I'm a light sleeper and he was moving around way too much: around the pillows over my head, down one side, back the other, laying down, getting up. I'm really tired now. The alarm went off. The cat and I went to the second floor, he stayed there while I showered, followed me back to the attic when I dressed. Going down to the first floor, he went down the stairs ahead of me, but stopped twice to look through the stair slats at the deer. The whole morning he followed me around. I was watching TV from a chair in front of the couch (you have to see it to understand, it's a big room), scratching the cat, he kept looking behind me. I went back upstairs, he followed me up and back down again looking through the slats the whole time. All morning he was vocal. He doesn't seemed scared, just tense. /bs Kevin T. - VRWC bambi no more ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Classified Spending On the Rise
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50108-2003Aug26?language=printer Black, or classified, programs requested in President Bush's 2004 defense budget are at the highest level since 1988, according to a report prepared by the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The center concluded that classified spending next fiscal year will reach about $23.2 billion of the Pentagon's total request for procurement and research funding. When adjusted for inflation, that is the largest dollar figure since the peak reached during President Ronald Reagan's defense buildup 16 years ago. The amount in 1988 was $19.7 billion, or $26.7 billion if adjusted for inflation, according to the center. It's puzzling. It sets the mind to wondering where the money's going and what sort of politically controversial things the administration is doing because they're not telling anybody, said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a research group in Alexandria that has been critical of the administration's defense priorities. Pike said part of the surge in the classified budget probably can be explained by increases for the Central Intelligence Agency's covert action programs, which are central to the war on terrorism. Traditionally, Pike said, much of the funding for the CIA is hidden in Air Force weapons procurement accounts. But unlike the 1980s, when it was widely known that the black budget was going to the development of stealth aircraft such as the B-2 bomber and F-117 fighter, the uses of the classified accounts today are far murkier, Pike said. The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is a Washington research group that analyzes many aspects of the defense budget. Steven Kosiak, who prepared the report on classified spending, said he reached his conclusions by comparing sums requested for open, or nonclassified, programs with the total Defense Department request for fiscal 2004. Some black spending in the Pentagon budget is designated for code-named programs such as the Army's Tractor Rose and the Navy's Retract Larch. But sources said some names may be accounting fictions that do not stand for actual programs. Other classified spending is accounted for under such bland headings as special activities. Officials at the Pentagon and in Congress declined to comment on the center's report, which was compiled earlier this summer. Key congressional defense committees will meet in the next several weeks to resolve differences over the 2004 Pentagon spending plan, including those involving classified programs. According to the Kosiak analysis, the Air Force's classified weapons procurement budget has jumped from $7 billion in 2001 to almost $11 billion as requested for 2004. In dollar terms, total classified spending in the Pentagon budget request has almost doubled since the mid-1990s, according to tables provided by Kosiak. Kosiak said in his report that performance in the classified programs has been mixed. He noted that highly successful weapons systems such as the F-117 and the B-2 were initially developed within the classified budget. But so was the Navy's A-12 medium attack plane, which was canceled in 1991 after a series of technical problems and cost increases. After it was canceled, manufacturers complained that secrecy in the program kept them from acquiring critical data needed to head off some of the problems. Restrictions placed on access to classified funding have meant that the Defense Department and Congress typically exercise less oversight over classified programs than unclassified ones, Kosiak wrote. In the case of the new defense budget, it is anybody's guess where most of the classified money is going, Pike said. But he said it is a good bet that some of it is going to programs that the administration is known to strongly favor, such as missile defense and the development of hypersonic planes that can fly beyond Earth's atmosphere. This is an administration that likes to play I've got a secret, he said. The growth of the classified budget appears to be part of a larger pattern of this administration being secretive. xponent Taxman Maru rob ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Why extra virgin olive oil is so healthy
Jan Coffey wrote: --- Ticia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Try a breakfast of fruit (apple, pear, peach, sometimes the less good banana) and cottage cheese, I'm addicted to *that*! You also need to eat some nuts with that for the right fats... I make my own oatmeal almond muffins which are easy to snatch along on my morning commute together with my 'prepared earlier' tupperware box of fruit + extra cottage cheese (to compensate for the oatmeal sugar in the muffin). Yummm. Energy boost right through to lunch. :)) That's just ~way~ too many carbs for me. Oats and Wheat can make it hard to concentrate. All those carbs in the fruit and I am ready to jump around. Good on a weekend when I will be spending the whole day active, but on a weekday at the office carbs are for after work when the evening is to be spent on the water, or in the gym. Weird. I eat too many carbs, I get drowsy, not active. And mostly hungry again. Too many protein, and I am mentally alert but also hungry, which is distracting. My prefect balance, honed over the past few years, is one small piece of fruit (or 1/2 large) topped off with cottage cheese and a (for American standards very small) muffin made from rolled oats and oat fiber with a little sugar, some eggwhites, and some olive oil + ground almonds. The fiber doesn't count as carbs as it doesn't get assimilated, but it's really good for the system. :) Not trying to convert you just saying it works for me. ;) Universal diets (as in healthy eating regimens, not slimming diets) are so bogus: everyone has different metabolism and activity levels. Ticia ',:) -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Book Reccomendations
Damon asked: With the growing presence of Mars I've become more interested in Astronomy as of late. What are some good books on the subject that has both breadth and depth, more than my ASTRO 001 Intro to Astronomy textbook? - The one book I've read recently doesn't really talk about Mars but currently thinking in String Theory and the quest for the ultimate theory (TOE, GUT, etc.). It requires careful reading. but is written for the layman. The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. George A ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Something else for the Fool....
Doubleplus ungood. http://www.all-the-other-names-were-taken.com/tipstips.html Perhaps we could just mark their emails with this instead: o / \ Jon Le Blog: http://zarq.livejournal.com _ Get MSN 8 and help protect your children with advanced parental controls. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/parental ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Politics, was [L3] Re: fight the evil of price discrimination
--- Doug Pensinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Gautam Mukunda wrote: No, I think the guy that has an audience of millions that take him very seriously and lies about a hell of a lot more than the poverty rate in the '50s is far worse than some guy most of us haven't even heard of who says ridiculous things like the above that no one in their right mind can take seriously. Much, much, much worse. Doug Which one of them can speak at any university in America to a rousing reception? Which one is the most cited intellectual in America? They both routinely have books on the bestseller list. Of course Rush has a larger audience - however much you want to deny it, the _people_ of America are pretty conservative. Chomsky just speaks to elites - like you. That's where his power comes from. The careful and purposeful exclusion of conservative voices from elite American institutions - to the extent that it is literally impossible for a conservative to get a position in a humanities faculty in any major university in America - is why there's actually political balance in this country. If it was about _what the people actually wanted_ it wouldn't even be close. = Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: BBC to put television show archive online
From: Jim Sharkey [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jean-Louis Couturier wrote: Matt wrote: It looks like we'll be able to download all our favorite old BBC shows! I sense an imminent _Dr Who_ binge. And _Neverwhere_ and _Red Dwarf_ and _Hitch Hiker's Guide_ and... Strange timing, considering that Neverwhere is being released on DVD September 9. *Adds to Christmas list* I've read Gaiman's Neverwhere, but had no idea they made a series out of it until I saw it listed at Amazon. Is the series any good? Faithful to the book? Worth buying the DVD set? I remember enjoying reading Neverwhere, but I guess it didn't really capture my imagination, because I can't recall much about it anymore, unfortunately. -Bryon _ Get MSN 8 and enjoy automatic e-mail virus protection. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Why extra virgin olive oil is so healthy
--- Ticia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jan Coffey wrote: --- Ticia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Try a breakfast of fruit (apple, pear, peach, sometimes the less good banana) and cottage cheese, I'm addicted to *that*! You also need to eat some nuts with that for the right fats... I make my own oatmeal almond muffins which are easy to snatch along on my morning commute together with my 'prepared earlier' tupperware box of fruit + extra cottage cheese (to compensate for the oatmeal sugar in the muffin). Yummm. Energy boost right through to lunch. :)) That's just ~way~ too many carbs for me. Oats and Wheat can make it hard to concentrate. All those carbs in the fruit and I am ready to jump around. Good on a weekend when I will be spending the whole day active, but on a weekday at the office carbs are for after work when the evening is to be spent on the water, or in the gym. Weird. I eat too many carbs, I get drowsy, not active. And mostly hungry again. Too many protein, and I am mentally alert but also hungry, which is distracting. My prefect balance, honed over the past few years, is one small piece of fruit (or 1/2 large) topped off with cottage cheese and a (for American standards very small) muffin made from rolled oats and oat fiber with a little sugar, some eggwhites, and some olive oil + ground almonds. The fiber doesn't count as carbs as it doesn't get assimilated, but it's really good for the system. :) Not trying to convert you just saying it works for me. ;) Universal diets (as in healthy eating regimens, not slimming diets) are so bogus: everyone has different metabolism and activity levels. People are different. Different people need to eat a different diet. Personaly I need high protien, carbs from corn, plenty of fruit in the evening. You seem to need a lot of carbs in general but a lot from grains, and lower protien. My wife doesn't feel right unless she get's rice. She eats wheat and it does nothing for her but produce fat. So she never get's full, but puts on weight if she tries to get her carbs from wheat. Rice and she feels full and healthy. The worse thing anyone can do is look at the average diet and try to eat what they are told. The pyramid just doesn't work for everyone. = _ Jan William Coffey _ __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
shrubCo cuts AIDS funding for africa / asia again
http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,7369,1030583,00.html US ends funds for African Aids programme Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington Thursday August 28, 2003 The Guardian The US government has cut off funds to an Aids programme for refugees in Africa - six weeks after President George Bush toured the continent promising to fight the disease - because it objects to the activities of one of the aid agencies involved, Marie Stopes International. A state department official said yesterday that US law prohibited the funding of organisations that support China's repressive population policy - a definition sufficiently elastic to include Marie Stopes, which runs family planning programmes there. However, organisations that work on reproductive health and Aids argue that the decision betrays the Bush administration's wider hostility to abortion. Its commitment to a rightwing Christian agenda has led it to promote abstinence as a strategy against HIV-Aids in preference to condoms, they say. The present funding cut is curious because Marie Stopes is just one of seven agencies involved in a project to promote HIV-Aids prevention and awareness in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Sudan, as well as in Sri Lanka, Asia. The other partners are the International Rescue Committee, Care, the American Refugee Committee, the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, John Snow International and Columbia University's department of population and family health. News of the cuts emerged barely six weeks after Mr Bush toured five African states to launch a $15bn (£9.5bn) Aids initiative. It was later cut back drastically, with Congress approving just $2bn of the $3bn sought in the first year. A state department official yesterday conceded that the consortium was doing good work. Last year, the state department gave $1m to the consortium, formed eight years ago, but it decided to end aid this year. The nature of the decision was a legal one, and it is based on the relationship Marie Stopes enjoys with the Chinese government, a state department official said. At no point has the state department accused Marie Stopes of abetting forced abortions and sterilisations. It appears to be implicated by its association. Marie Stopes has a relationship with the Chinese government and its birth limitation programmes that has caused a legal impediment, the official added. Marie Stopes argues that its work on contraception in China is intended to halt the need for abortion. We are working for the opposite of that - to reduce abortion and increase choices, Samantha Guy, a Marie Stopes spokeswoman, said. She said the aid cut would force the organisation to cancel a new project in Angola. Marie Stopes is the second agency targeted by the Bush administration, which is rigorously enforcing a 1985 law that bans US federal funding for groups that assist in enforced sterilisation or abortion. In July 2002, the White House overrode Congress to block a $34m award to the UN Population Fund for its work. UNFPA works with Marie Stopes and other agencies in China. It did so despite compelling evidence. UNFPA confines its activities to 32 counties in China, selected because they agreed in 1998 to abandon targets and quotas for abortion, according to a spokeswoman for the agency, Kristin Hetle. Organisations working on reproductive health argue that the law is being used to mask a wider agenda of the Bush administration, which has poured funding into programmes preaching sexual abstinence as a strategy against teenage pregnancy and Aids. It has also promoted such tactics in foreign aid programmes, favouring Christian organisations over other, more established agencies. --- Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded project. - James Madison ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: BBC to put television show archive online
Bryon wrote: I've read Gaiman's Neverwhere, but had no idea they made a series out of it until I saw it listed at Amazon. Is the series any good? Faithful to the book? Worth buying the DVD set? My understanding is that the series came first, and then Gaiman made a book out of it. I could be wrong though... Reggie Bautista _ MSN 8: Get 6 months for $9.95/month http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
The immorality of the Ten Commandments
http://slate.msn.com/id/2087621/ Moore's Law The immorality of the Ten Commandments. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Wednesday, August 27, 2003, at 2:04 PM PT The row over the boulder-sized version of the so-called Ten Commandments, and as to whether they should be exhibited in such massive shape on public property, misses the opportunity to consider these top-10 divine ordinances and their relationship to original intent. Judge Roy Moore is clearly, as well as a fool and a publicity-hound, a man who identifies the Mount Sinai orders to Moses with a certain interpretation of Protestantism. But we may ask ourselves why any sect, however primitive, would want to base itself on such vague pre-Christian desert morality (assuming Moses to be pre-Christian). The first four of the commandments have little to do with either law or morality, and the first three suggest a terrific insecurity on the part of the person supposedly issuing them. I am the lord thy god and thou shalt have no other ... no graven images ... no taking of my name in vain: surely these could have been compressed into a more general injunction to show respect. The ensuing order to set aside a holy day is scarcely a moral or ethical one, unless you assume that other days are somehow profane. (The Rev. Ian Paisley, I remember, used to refuse interviewers for Sunday newspapers even after it was pointed out to him that it's the Monday edition that is prepared on Sunday.) Whereas a day of rest, as prefigured in the opening passages of Genesis, is no more than organized labor might have demanded, perhaps during the arduous days of unpaid pyramid erection. So the first four commandments have almost nothing to do with moral conduct and cannot in any case be enforced by law unless the state forbids certain sorts of art all week, including religious and iconographic artand all activity on the Sabbath (which the words of the fourth commandment do not actually require). The next instruction is to honor one's parents: a harmless enough idea, but again unenforceable in law and inapplicable to the many orphans that nature or god sees fit to create. That there should be no itemized utterance enjoining the protection of children seems odd, given that the commandments are addressed in the first instance to adults. But then, the same god frequently urged his followers to exterminate various forgotten enemy tribes down to the last infant, sparing only the virgins, so this may be a case where hand-tying or absolute prohibitions were best avoided. There has never yet been any society, Confucian or Buddhist or Islamic, where the legal codes did not frown upon murder and theft. These offenses were certainly crimes in the Pharaonic Egypt from which the children of Israel had, if the story is to be believed, just escaped. So the middle-ranking commandments, of which the chief one has long been confusingly rendered thou shalt not kill, leave us none the wiser as to whether the almighty considers warfare to be murder, or taxation and confiscation to be theft. Tautology hovers over the whole enterprise. In much the same way, few if any courts in any recorded society have approved the idea of perjury, so the idea that witnesses should tell the truth can scarcely have required a divine spark in order to take root. To how many of its original audience, I mean to say, can this have come with the force of revelation? Then it's a swift wrap-up with a condemnation of adultery (from which humans actually can refrain) and a prohibition upon covetousness (from which they cannot). To insist that people not annex their neighbor's cattle or wife or anything that is his might be reasonable, even if it does place the wife in the same category as the cattle, and presumably to that extent diminishes the offense of adultery. But to demand don't even think about it is absurd and totalitarian, and furthermore inhibiting to the Protestant spirit of entrepreneurship and competition. One is presuming (is one not?) that this is the same god who actually created the audience he was addressing. This leaves us with the insoluble mystery of why he would have molded (in his own image, yet) a covetous, murderous, disrespectful, lying, and adulterous species. Create them sick, and then command them to be well? What a mad despot this is, and how fortunate we are that he exists only in the minds of his worshippers. It's obviously too much to expect that a Bronze Age demagogue should have remembered to condemn drug abuse, drunken driving, or offenses against gender equality, or to demand prayer in the schools. Still, to have left rape and child abuse and genocide and slavery out of the account is to have been negligent to some degree, even by the lax standards of the time. I wonder what would happen if secularists were now to insist that the verses of the Bible that actually recommend enslavement, mutilation, stoning, and mass murder of civilians be incised on the walls of, say, public
The Inquisition in Alabama
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wxxi/news.newsmain?action=articleARTICL E_ID=538904 The Inquisition in Alabama By Susan Dunn (2003-08-27) WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS. - In 1784, Patrick Henry, then a Virginia legislator, proposed a bill that imposed a moderate annual tax on all citizens of Virginia for the support of the Christian religion. When he read the bill, James Madison saw red. For Madison, Henry's bill spelled the beginning of a new Inquisition. Distant as [the bill] may be, in its present form, from the Inquisition, he wrote, it differs from it only in degree. The one is the first step, the other the last in the career of intolerance. Unlike some Americans today who applaud monuments of the Ten Commandments on state property that sanctify the Judeo-Christian tradition, Madison was adamant that Christian religion deserved no privileged status whatsoever; to single out one religion, he wrote, degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those who have a different sense of the divine. Who does not see, he asked in 1785, that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christianity, in exclusion of all other Sects? Indeed, for Madison, freedom of religion was the foundation of all other rights. When he first proposed a bill of rights to Congress in June 1789, he underscored freedom of conscience: The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, abridged. There was no murky area concerning the separation of church and state for Madison: he saw only black and white. When he was president in 1811, as his biographer Irving Brant reminds us, a bill came up to grant a certain piece of land to a Baptist church in Mississippi; because of a surveying error, the church had been built on federal land. Wasn't it fair to rectify the error and give the church the land? Madison said no and vetoed the bill. He saw a slippery slope and a dangerous precedent. Madison even objected to chaplains in Congress who were paid out of the federal taxes. The appointment of congressional chaplains, he wrote, was a palpable violation of equal rights because it shut the door of worship against the members whose creeds and consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority. Chaplains for the Army and Navy fared no better in his mind. And yet, because chaplains in the Army and Navy already existed, he thought the more prudent course was to leave certain small matters alone. Nor did proclamations of thanksgiving meet his test of separation of church and state for, he wrote, they seem to imply and certainly nourish the erroneous idea of a national religion. Not all politicians or even presidents have understood Madison's intent - not even his contemporary John Adams. In his inaugural speech in 1797, President Adams addressed his words to all who call themselves Christians, and, at the close of his speech, declared that it was his duty to end by reminding Americans that a decent respect for Christianity was the best recommendation for public service. But, he would later write - perhaps as apologetically: Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion. Eighteenth-century rationality is a hard act to follow. But Alabamians - who have wrangled over a Ten Commandments monument in the state judicial building - as well as the rest of Americans would do well to return to the words of the founders for a cool lesson in the meaning of freedom of conscience and tolerance. -- Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded project. - James Madison ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Creative spam
--- David Hobby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Deborah Harrell wrote: Lo, these many years ago, in college Organic Chemistry, I and a friend created the 'O-chem Personality Wheel,' with categories from Ortho-normal (your basic staid and sedate microbiology major) on to Para-normal (included mushroom-tea drinkers) and Epi-normal (off-the-ringers who were fun at parties but not invited to all-night study/gossip sessions); Abi-normals were of course those too weird to relate even to DDers or SCAers! ;D Debbi Meta-normal Herself Maru :) I give, what does meta-normal mean then? LOL Well, as my friends and I didn't want to consider ourselves 'normal' 'weird' *or* 'sedate,' Meta-normals were of course practically perfect in every way... huge grin On Casual Aquaintence I'd Seem To Be Ortho-normal Actually Maru ;D __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
How the RIAA tracks songs
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/08/28/downloading.music.ap/ind ex.html WASHINGTON (AP) -- The recording industry is providing its most detailed glimpse into some of the detective-style techniques it has employed as part of its secretive campaign against online music swappers. The disclosures were included in court papers filed against a Brooklyn woman fighting efforts to identify her for allegedly sharing nearly 1,000 songs over the Internet. The recording industry disputed her defense that songs on her family's computer were from compact discs she had legally purchased. - jmh ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Creative spam
From: Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Creative spam Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 12:06:21 -0700 (PDT) --- David Hobby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Deborah Harrell wrote: Lo, these many years ago, in college Organic Chemistry, I and a friend created the 'O-chem Personality Wheel,' with categories from Ortho-normal (your basic staid and sedate microbiology major) on to Para-normal (included mushroom-tea drinkers) and Epi-normal (off-the-ringers who were fun at parties but not invited to all-night study/gossip sessions); Abi-normals were of course those too weird to relate even to DDers or SCAers! ;D Debbi Meta-normal Herself Maru :) I give, what does meta-normal mean then? LOL Well, as my friends and I didn't want to consider ourselves 'normal' 'weird' *or* 'sedate,' Meta-normals were of course practically perfect in every way... huge grin On Casual Aquaintence I'd Seem To Be Ortho-normal Actually Maru ;D MY question was 'what in the heck is mushroom tea', which, when googled prompted the following url: http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/ANSWERS/ANS00650.html Full text follows: FDA CAUTIONS CONSUMERS ON KOMBUCHA MUSHROOM TEA FDA has been receiving inquiries about Kombucha mushroom tea -- a product which has been mentioned in media reports lately for many uses, from inducing a general state of well being to treating diseases such as AIDS and cancer. FDA has not approved this product as a treatment for any medical condition. The following information can be used to answer questions: Kombucha mushroom tea, also known as Manchurian tea or Kargasok tea, is not actually derived from a mushroom, but from the fermentation of various yeasts and bacteria. A starter culture is added to a mixture of black tea and sugar, and the resulting mix is allowed to ferment for a week or more. The product contains considerable quantities of acids commonly found in some foods such as vinegar, and smaller quantities of ethyl alcohol. Because the acid could leach harmful quantities of lead and other toxic elements from certain types of containers -- some ceramic and painted containers and lead crystal -- such containers should not be used for storing Kombucha tea. The unconventional nature of the process used to make Kombucha tea has led to questions as to whether the product could become contaminated with potentially harmful microorganisms, such as the mold Aspergillus. Such contamination could produce serious adverse effects in immune-compromised individuals. FDA studies have found no evidence of contamination in Kombucha products fermented under sterile conditions. FDA and state of California inspections of the facilities of a major Kombucha tea supplier also found that its product was being manufactured under sanitary conditions. However, the agency still has concerns that home-brewed versions of this tea manufactured under non-sterile conditions may be prone to microbiological contamination. FDA will continue to monitor the situation and encourages consumers to consult appropriate health professionals for the treatment of serious diseases. Yuck. Jon GSV Hallucinogens (We Know What Mushrooms Are For Class) Le Blog: http://zarq.livejournal.com _ Get MSN 8 and help protect your children with advanced parental controls. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/parental ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Global Warming
--- Kevin Tarr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I wrote: --- William T Goodall wrote: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns4072 Europe may be breathing a sigh of relief as its record-breaking heatwave eases, but there is still plenty to worry about. Temperature changes caused by global warming are likely to transform agriculture on both sides of the Atlantic snip The eastern and western seaboards of the US will become much wetter over the next century, while some central states will become so starved of water that they will be unable to support agriculture at all. I'd guessed it from our drought -- Colorado is one of the places forecast to become more arid in this report: But Kansas, Colorado and Nebraska are just some of the central states that could suffer drought, the researchers say in two papers published in June this year (Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, vol 117, p73 and p 97). So, are the idiot developers still putting in Kentucky bluegrass lawns instead of native prairie grasses? -oh, yeah. :/ snip Colorado and Nebraksa? You mean the states that have active sand dunes? Now how could sand be there, if drought is caused by global warming? drily Well, sand in and of itself isn't the issue -- after all, Florida and Hawaii both have sand too (and maybe dunes, for all I know). The problem is loss of rainfall in already-arid or semi-arid regions, which can convert useful-to-humans land into non-livable land (and that says nothing of the flora and fauna, see link below). Could it be natural hundred and thousand year cycles causing drought and wet conditions? Nah, that's too easy (and there's no money to be made off of it). http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/drought/drght_data.html scratches head in puzzlement Uh, as to the latter, *I* certainly won't profit by proclaiming that human activity is contributing to the current warming. Or is profiting from selling drought-tolerant lawn-grass unacceptable, while profiting from raising gasoline prices right before a holiday weekend is merely taking what the market will bear? :P sarcasm mode off No one denies that the climate changes, that it has done so in the past, and will do so in the future; it is the current and near-future-calculated *rate-of-change* that concerns many scientists now - and human activity has affected the rise of greenhouse gases. http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/releases2000/feb00/noaa00010.html Researchers at the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have found evidence that indicates that the rate of global warming is accelerating and that in the past 25 years it achieved the rate previously predicted for the 21st century (2 degrees C per century)... http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/climateuncertainties.html Scientists know for certain that human activities are changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide (CO2 ), in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times have been well documented. There is no doubt this atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities. It's well accepted by scientists that greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere and tend to warm the planet. By increasing the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, human activities are strengthening Earth's natural greenhouse effect. The key greenhouse gases emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries. A warming trend of about 1°F has been recorded since the late 19th century. Warming has occurred in both the northern and southern hemispheres, and over the oceans. Confirmation of 20th-century global warming is further substantiated by melting glaciers, decreased snow cover in the northern hemisphere and even warming below ground... Civilizations that may have collapsed under natural drought conditions include the Mayans (mentioned in the link you gave), and the 'Anasazi' in the Four Corners area. It is likely that the Anasazi contributed to their collapse by over-cutting trees and cutting water channels/creating arroyos: http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/societies/#anasazi The Easter Islanders denuded their home of trees, leading to eventual collapse of their civilization: http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/societies/#easter Data for the impact of recent temperature rise on various animals and plants has been documented: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/03/root18.html Global warming is having a significant impact on hundreds of plant and animal species around the world -- although the most dramatic effects may not be felt for decades, according to a new study in the journal Nature... ...The authors pointed out that, although plants and animals have responded to climatic changes throughout their evolutionary history, a
Re: unconstitutional House vote sanctifies religion
In a message dated 8/27/2003 5:01:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On the flip side, many are claiming that to forcibly remove the Ten Commandments monument would violate _their_ First Amendment rights of freedom of religion. (I'm not arguing one way or the other here, but simply reporting that both sides are using the same Constitutional argument to support their positions.) Removal of the monument does not violate anyone's freedom of religion. They can still believe in the 10 commandments, they can carry a personal copy, they can have the commandments prominantly displayed in their homes and places of worship. It cannot be displayed in a public place. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
I get the most interesting spam [ was: Fw: Buy drugs, Heroin,Tomohawk rockets, cocaine and other shit
Outstanding!!! Anyone else getting love notes like this? rob - Original Message - From: Alexis Isabella [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2003 5:44 AM Subject: Buy drugs, Heroin, Tomohawk rockets, cocaine and other shit Welcome to the site http://www.darkprofits.com, it's us again, now we extended our offerings, here is a list: 1. Heroin, in liquid and crystal form. 2. Rocket fuel and Tomohawk rockets (serious enquiries only). 3. Other rockets (Air-to-Air), orders in batches of 10. 4. New shipment of cocaine has arrived, buy 9 grams and get 10th for free. 5. We also offer gay-slaves for sale, we offer only such service on the NET, you can choose the one you like, then get straight to business. 6. Fake currencies, such as Euros and US dollars, prices would match competition. 7. Also, as always, we offer widest range of child pornography and exclusive lolita galleries, to keep out clients busy. Everyone is welcome, be it in States or any other place worldwide. ATTENTION. Clearance offer. Buy 30 grams of heroin, get 5 free. Prepay your batch of rockets (air-to-air) and recieve a portable rocket-lacuncher for free. http://www.darkprofits.com This offer won't last! Only until 20th of August all our clients will also recieve a pack of 2 CDs, with best selection of child pornography. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The immorality of the Ten Commandments
In a message dated 8/28/2003 1:59:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Moore's Law The immorality of the Ten Commandments. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Wednesday, August 27, 2003, at 2:04 PM PT George Carlin did this first and it was funnier ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
