Mark's Notebook

Keyword : News

Bush Considers Up to 20,000 More Troops for Iraq

New York Times

By David S. Cloud and Jeff Zeleny; Published: December 29, 2006

WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 - The Bush administration is considering an increase in troop levels in Iraq of 17,000 to 20,000, which would be accomplished in part by delaying the departure of two Marine regiments now deployed in Anbar Province, Pentagon officials said Thursday.

The idea of extending the deployments of two Marine units has emerged in part because most of the marines in Iraq are on seven-month rotations and keeping them there longer is considered more palatable than holding over Army brigades, which are already serving tours of a year or longer, one official said.

Additional troops would come from sending into Iraq a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division headed for the region next month and possibly by speeding up the deployment of several Army brigades now scheduled to go to Iraq by next spring.

Other options remain under consideration, the officials said, noting that a decision to speed up deployment schedules would put more strain on Army and Marine equipment and personnel. But other options, like mobilizing reserve units, would take months, officials said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/29/world/middleeast/29prexy.html

Mark says: I'm really glad Matthew came home on schedule in October. His schedule has been approximately seven months on tour and five months at home. It appears later units will be taking longer rotations.

Merry!, uh, ... Happy! Oh, just have a nice day

Wisconsin State Journal

by SUSAN LAMPERT SMITH

When Tom Flynn hears "Merry Christmas!," he hears an implied insult coming from conservative Christians reasserting their dominance at a time when America is growing more diverse. Flynn is waging "war on Christmas," and he says his side, the "Happy holidays!" crowd, is winning.

The right says we wreck the holiday when we don't acknowledge its Christian roots. Flynn says "Merry Christmas" has become "hate speech."

Flynn says demands that retailers such as Wal-Mart and Macy's include the word "Christmas" in their advertising are an affront to Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and everyone who doesn't spend December anticipating the birthday of Jesus Christ: "Merry Christmas is code for 'All you non-Christians get to the back of the bus.' This is a Christian country. We own the last two (months) of the calendar. We're No. 1! By the way, you're all going to hell!"

http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/column/index.php?ntid=109902&ntpid=1

Mark sez: As a Christian I'm not supposed to use foul language. Let's just say this whole idea makes me want to hurl.

Presidents, Well Known or Not, Will Have Their Day on a Dollar

New York Times

By Matthew Healey; Published November 20, 2006

The United States Mint is unveiling four designs for one-dollar coins today, featuring likenesses of the first four presidents. They begin a series that is to last a decade and portray every deceased president.

The first coin, displaying George Washington on one side and the Statue of Liberty on the other, will go into circulation in mid-February, in time for Presidents' Day. After that, coins with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison will be issued at three-month intervals.

Four more will appear, in order of each president's service, every year until 2016. Designs are based on presidential medals made previously by the Mint and on portraits in the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, where today's unveiling takes place.

The size, color and metal content of the $1 coins will be identical to those of the current Sacagawea dollars, but their luster should last longer because of a new anti-tarnishing compound that will be applied to blank coins between the time they are annealed, or softened by heating, and struck with the design.

The date and some inscriptions will be stamped into the edge, airing out the designs.

The director of the Mint, Edmund C. Moy, said the number of each presidential dollar coin issued would depend on circulation demands forecast by the Federal Reserve, regardless of how well known a president was. "This could be a renaissance for some of our lesser-known presidents," Mr. Moy said in an interview.

There will also be four new designs for the penny in 2009, to commemorate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth.

Hopes are that the new dollars will be as popular as the state quarters, many of which have been taken out of circulation by collectors. The government has earned $4 billion to $5 billion on the state-quarter series since 1999.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/us/20coin.html?th&emc=th

See also the US Mint web site:

http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/$1coin/

Christian charity bans Christmas themed children's gifts

Daily Mail

By Sam Greenhill

Christian charity Samaritan's Purse fears anything relating to Jesus may offend Muslims

Mark says: We have been putting together these shoeboxes for years. We are very surprised to hear this. We were never given such instructions; actually, we were asked to include tracts and Bibles in the boxes. Perhaps things are different in the UK than they are here in the US. Perhaps the boxes shipped from the UK go to different countries than those shipped from the US. More likely, some of the statements from Samaritan's Purse have been misinterpreted.

It is a Christian charity bringing Christmas cheer to needy children abroad.

So its decision to ban Jesus, God and anything else connected with its own faith has been greeted with little short of puzzlement.

Operation Christmas Child, run by the charity Samaritan's Purse, sends festive packages to deprived youngsters in countries ravaged by war and famine.

Donors are asked to pack shoeboxes with a cuddly toy, a toothbrush and toothpaste, soap and flannel, notepads, colouring books and crayons - but nothing to do with Christmas.

Stories from the Bible, images of Jesus and any other Christian literature are expressely forbidden - in case Muslims are offended.

Last Christmas, Britons filled 1.13 million shoeboxes for Samaritan's Purse to send to children abroad.

But Barbara Hill, who works at the worldwide charity's UK headquarters in Buckhurst Hill, Essex, said: "Anything we find in the boxes which has a religious nature will be removed.

"If a box was opened by a Muslim child in a Muslim country they may be offended so we try to avoid religious images."

Yesterday the policy was condemned as "bizarre". John Midgley, cofounder of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, said: "It seems extraordinary that a Christian charity is so concerned about political correctness that it is banning itself from its own core values.

The appeal sends shoe boxes from Britain to children in countries including Azerbaijan, Armenia, Romania, Serbia, Sudan and Mozambique.

Although no Christian literature is included in the boxes, the charity does separately distribute Christmas stories from the Bible and encourages Bible study in areas where it gives toys out.

A spokesman for Samaritan's Purse, which was introduced to Britain by evangelist Billy Graham and is run internationally by his son Franklin, said: "Christianity motivates many of our supporters to help children in need. We are a Christian charity and that's about helping people.

"But it's our policy not to put religious, political or military items in boxes which go to areas of different cultures.

"All shoeboxes are checked in the UK warehouses in case someone has ignored the instruction and put such an item into a shoebox and, if found, any such item is removed."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=4155
51&in_page_id=1770

Bible Saves Man's Life

First Coast News

By Ryan Duffy

A tiny Bible is being credited with saving a man's life.

A lot of people feel God's word will save their lives. And for Bill Henry it did.

He was taking trash to the dumpster when two men stepped out and fired two bullets in his direction.

Bill figured they missed him, but one round actually hit him square in the chest.

"We got to looking and that's when we noticed the two bibles in my shirt pocket were hit with a single round," says Henry.

The other bullet passed right through his hat.

The thing is, Henry doesn't usually carry a bible. But on this day, at this particular time, he was returning them to a friend.

"I know it was divine protection, can't think of any other reason for it."

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/news-article.aspx?storyid=68592

Church challenges festive stamps

BBC News

The Church of England has challenged the Royal Mail's move to issue festive stamps without a Christian theme.

Santa, a snowman and a reindeer are among the festive images on the Royal Mail's 40th set of Christmas stamps.

The church "regretted" Royal Mail's decision not to launch "Christian themed designs reminding people of the true meaning of Christmas".

The Royal Mail said it alternated its designs between religious and non-religious cards each year.

http:news.bbc.co.uk2hibusiness6120858.stm

Wal-Mart brings Christmas back into stores

Los Angeles Times

By Alana Semuels, Times Staff Writer; November 10, 2006

The holiday season may not yet have arrived, but Christmas is back at Wal-Mart.

After being vilified by conservative critics last year for switching its holiday message from "Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays," the world's largest retailer changed its mind again.

The chain said Thursday that 60% more of its merchandise will be labeled "Christmas" compared with last year. And customers will hear Christmas carols as they shop.

"We certainly got some feedback last year," spokesman Nick Agarwal said. "We're hoping this will be more in tune with what customers want."

Last year, activists lambasted Wal-Mart. The American Family Assn. and Liberty Counsel organized boycotts of stores with "holiday" campaigns. More than 700,000 supporters signed a petition asking Wal-Mart to use the word "Christmas."

"Wal-Mart has seen the light," said Mathew Staver, founder of Orlando, Fla.-based Liberty Counsel. "The American people are tired of having Christmas censored or secularized."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-walmart10nov10,1,763467.story

The Christmas Wars Begin

USA Today

Wal-Mart wishes you a Merry Christmas

By Jayne O'Donnell, USA TODAY

Wal-Mart will put "Christmas" back into the holidays this year, the retailer plans to announce Thursday.

A year after religious and other groups boycotted retailers, including Wal-Mart, for downplaying Christmas, the world's largest retail chain will have an in-your-face Christmas theme this year.

"We, quite frankly, have learned a lesson from last year," says Wal-Mart spokeswoman Linda Blakley. "We're not afraid to use the term 'Merry Christmas.' We'll use it early, and we'll use it often."

John Fleming, Wal-Mart's executive vice president of marketing, says the retailer, which recently lowered prices on toys and electronics, will be pitching Christmas almost as much as "value" to holiday shoppers.

A TV ad trumpeting Christmas will air for the first time next week.

The name of the department with Christmas decorating needs will change from The Holiday Shop, which it was for the past several years, to The Christmas Shop.

Store signs will count down the days until Christmas, and Christmas carols will be piped throughout the season.

About 60% more merchandise will be labeled "Christmas" rather than "holiday" this year over last.

The Christmas spirit is spreading. Macy's, the largest U.S. department store chain, plans to have "Merry Christmas" signs in all departments. All of Macy's window displays will have Christmas themes. At New York's Herald Square, the theme will be "Oh, Christmas Tree."

"Our intention is to make every customer feel welcomed and appreciated, whether they celebrate Christmas or other holidays," spokesman Jim Sluzewski says.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2006-11-08-christmas-usat_x.htm

Slow Home Grants Stall Progress in New Orleans

New York Times

By Leslie Eaton; Published November 11, 2006

NEW ORLEANS — The $7.5 billion program to rebuild Louisiana by helping residents repair or replace their flooded homes has gotten off to a slow start, frustrating government officials and outraging many homeowners who say they are still in limbo 14 months after Hurricane Katrina hit.

Though nearly 79,000 families have applied to the program, called the Road Home, only 1,721 have been told how much grant money they will receive. And just 22 have received access to the cash, which was provided by federal taxpayers and is being distributed by the state.

“I don’t know of anyone who has actually received any money,” said Cassandra D. Wall, who is active in a group of homeowners from the eastern part of New Orleans. Ms. Wall said she planned to attend a protest Nov. 17 in Baton Rouge, the state capital, “to go public with the outrage and the outcry.”

The city’s mayor, C. Ray Nagin, is so dissatisfied with the pace of the program that on Nov. 1 he announced that the city was developing a plan to lend money to people waiting for their Road Home grants.

Officials announced on Nov. 6 that Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco had ordered the contractor managing the program to calculate 10,000 awards by the end of the month.

“It’s time to kick into high gear,” said Walter Leger, a lawyer and a member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, which devised the federally financed Road Home program. “It’s time to forget the reasons and excuses” for the slow pace so far.

In some ways, the program’s low-speed beginning reflects an urgent need to avoid the kind of waste and fraud that plagued federal programs after the hurricane. The government, among other things, is demanding that applicants produce details of insurance policies and payouts, proof of title to a house, and, if possible, official assessments of a home’s prestorm value. Many New Orleans residents lost such paperwork in the flood, or never had it in the first place.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/11/us/11louisiana.html?th&emc=th

Harvest Crusade

We were in North Carolina last weekend visiting our son Matthew, who just returned from a seven-month tour in Iraq with the Marines. While we were away, Greg Laurie held the first-ever Harvest Crusade here in San Jose. The San Jose Mercury apparently did not run any articles after the fact, but I did find these other articles about the crusade.

Greg Laurie Embarks on Greater Silicon Valley Harvest Crusade

by Logan Mitchell, Christian Today, Saturday, October 14, 2006

Last night's crusade drew some 10,000 people, with 1,033 people making decisions to give their lives to Christ. 2,751 people joined the crusade via webcast.

This is the first time Harvest is hitting San Jose and only the second time the ministry held a crusade in northern California. Some 220 churches are working together to help bring Laurie's signature straightforward message of faith to the community.

Nearly ten years ago, “America’s pastor,” the Rev. Billy Graham, had visited the Bay Area at the invitation of local pastors. He held crusades in September and October of 1997 in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, where thousands committed themselves to Christ.

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/greg.laurie.embarks.on.greater.silicon.val
ley.harvest.crusade/7977.htm

Greg Laurie Opens Crusade in a 'Pretty Secular Environment'

By Lillian Kwon, Christian Post Reporter, Sat, Oct. 14 2006

Preaching his well-known Harvest message for the first time in San Jose, Calif., Greg Laurie opened the way for 10,000 people Friday night in Silicon Valley - a region he had called a "pretty secular environment."

Laurie called them the "most responsive Friday night group" that he's ever had in any crusade with applause following the message of the gospel and laughter following his jokes. With a concerted effort of more than 270 churches, this is the first time the Harvest Crusade came to Silicon Valley where only 7 percent of the people attend church on a Sunday morning, which is far below the 25 percent seen in other communities, Laurie had noted. But he enjoys speaking to people who have no background in Christianity, he said in an interview with U.K.-based Christian Today.

The Harvest Crusades have visited 35 cities, 16 states and four different countries in the past 17 years. To date, the evangelistic events have seen more than 3.4 million people in attendance and over 276,000 public decisions for Christ.

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20061014/25230.htm

Traveling the globe to see Mickey

San Jose Mercury News

Fan Club Visits All The Parks In One Trip

By Sylvia Hui, Associated Press

Keith Simpson and his six friends from Sydney -- all Disney fanatics sporting matching polo shirts that show Mickey ears over Australia's map -- couldn't be happier.

The group was in Hong Kong on the second leg of its Disney-themed round-the-world tour, realizing months of planning for a 32-day trip that takes them to every Disney park in the world -- from Tokyo to Hong Kong to Paris, to the U.S. flagships, Disneyland in Anaheim and Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla.

The world trip cost about $4,661, including discounted rates for hotels, transfers and passes to the parks, Godfrey said. The Tokyo leg cost an extra $526, because the air miles went over the prescribed mileage limit in the round-the-world air fare.

http://www.mercurynews.com:80/mld/mercurynews/news/15654213.htm

UC Berkeley course ontent available online

San Jose Mercury News

More than 250 hours of UC-Berkeley content is now available online.

http://video.google.com/ucberkeley

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/education/15627859.htm

Look, Mum, I've bought a car on eBay for £9,000

Telegraph UK

A three-year-old boy used his mother's computer to buy a £9,000 car on the internet auction site eBay.

Jack Neal's parents only discovered their son's successful bid when they received a congratulations message from the website about the Barbie pink Nissan Figaro.

"So we checked and saw it was a Barbie pink car which we'd bought for £8,999. We flew into a panic."

The next morning Jack woke and told his parents: "I've bought a car."

Mrs Neal, of Sleaford, Lincs, said she thought she had left her eBay password in her computer.

She said: "Jack's a whizz on the PC and just pressed all the right buttons."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/26/nebay26.xml

Stanford Scholars use x-rays to read hidden text in Archimedes manuscript

San Jose Mercury News

After more than 1,000 years in obscurity, the last unreadable pages of the works of mathematician Archimedes are being deciphered, thanks to the X-ray vision at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center.

Letter by letter, ancient Greek that was hidden for centuries by neglect, damage and abuse is being revealed by a powerful X-ray light emitted by the synchrotron at SLAC, then transmitted to computer screens for analysis by an international team of scholars.

The discovery is giving researchers the most complete record since the Middle Ages of the works of the legendary mathematician, who famously exclaimed "Eureka!" upon discovering how to measure volume while sitting in his bathtub.

Only faint outlines of Archimedes' words and diagrams can be seen by the unaided eye. First copied in 975 A.D. by a Christian monk onto goatskin parchment, the work has barely survived fire, water, acid, mold, wax, glue and even forgery.

But the synchrotron's X-ray is able to detect the iron in the ancient ink, causing it to fluoresce. In work guided by Stanford physicist Uwe Bergmann, the X-ray creates patterns of electronic signals, which are converted by computer into shades of gray, readily recognizable as Greek characters.

Preliminary interpretation of the text offers several new insights into the mind of Archimedes, who lived in the 3rd century B.C.

For instance, it suggests that he understood and set rules for infinity, previously considered a problem too difficult for ancient Greek mathematicians. It also contains a treatise on combinatorics, a field of problem-solving now used in computer science.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/15188980.htm

Suggestions for Kids in LA without Disneyland

New York Times

by Sharon Waxman

Consider, just for a moment, a weekend on the left coast without the prefabricated pleasures of Disneyland or Universal Studios.

• There are few civic gifts that equal the delights of the Getty Center, located off Sepulveda Boulevard not far from Westwood. 1200 Getty Center Drive, 310-440-7300; parking $7, admission free.

• Don't miss the spectacular architecture of Frank Gehry downtown at the Walt Disney Hall Concert Hall. 111 South Grand Avenue, 323-850-2000.

• Then, take a stroll about a block and a half to the recently completed Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, where the interior is a tribute to California history. 555 West Temple Street, 213-680-5200.

• Hike among the huge eucalyptus trees in Laurel Canyon Park. 8260 Mulholland Drive, 818-769-4415. Free.

• Will Rogers State Historic Park, on Sunset Boulevard a few miles from the ocean, has acres of rolling lawn. 1501 Will Rogers State Park Road, off Sunset, Pacific Palisades, 310-454-8212; parking $7.

• Try Will Rogers State Beach for a quiet, contemplative moment. Enter along the Pacific Coast Highway near Temescal Canyon Boulevard. Parking $5 to $10. Or head for the Santa Monica Pier, at Colorado and Ocean Avenues. Keep an eye peeled for dolphins and seals; they swim close in to shore.

• Eat at Mel's Drive-In on the Sunset Strip. Open 24 hours, 8585 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, 310-854-7200. Or La Serenata de Garibaldi, a reasonably priced, gourmet fish restaurant, in Santa Monica at 1416 Fourth Street, 310-656-7017.

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/travel/18kids.html

A Legacy of the Storm: Depression and Suicide

New York Times

By Susan Saulny. Published: June 21, 2006

NEW ORLEANS, June 20 — Sgt. Ben Glaudi, the commander of the Police Department's Mobile Crisis Unit here, spends much of each workday on this city's flood-ravaged streets trying to persuade people not to kill themselves.

New Orleans is experiencing what appears to be a near epidemic of depression and post-traumatic stress disorders, one that mental health experts say is of an intensity rarely seen in this country. It is contributing to a suicide rate that state and local officials describe as close to triple what it was before Hurricane Katrina struck and the levees broke 10 months ago.

Dr. Jeffrey Rouse, the deputy New Orleans coroner dealing with psychiatric cases, said the suicide rate in the city was less than nine a year per 100,000 residents before the storm and increased to an annualized rate of more than 26 per 100,000 in the four months afterward, to the end of 2005.

At the end of each day, Sergeant Glaudi returns to his own wrecked neighborhood and sleeps in a government-issued trailer outside what used to be home. "You ride around and all you see is debris, debris, debris," he said.

And that is a major part of the problem, experts agree: the people of New Orleans are traumatized again every time they look around.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/21/us/21depress.html

Where attending church at Easter is itself a test of faith

Times Online

(Still catching up ... Mark)

From Daniel McGrory in Baghdad

TO REACH her church to celebrate Good Friday today, Sameera Girgis will be smuggled on to a bus at a secret location, walk through a chicane of razor wire, and submit to a body search by gunmen guarding the Evangelical Protestant Church in central Baghdad. Security teams will check even her Bible to ensure that there is no bomb inside. “In Baghdad you pray watched over by Kalashnikovs, not angels,” she says with a shrug of her shoulders.

Dr Girgis realises that she will risk her life attending services this Easter, but the 42-year-old university lecturer insists that the insurgents will not scare her away as they have thousands of her fellow Christians in Iraq.

A neighbour and university colleague from the suburb of Azamiyah, north of Baghdad, was shot dead on his doorstep three months ago for organising the clandestine Sunday ten-mile bus trips to church.

Eight months ago insurgents bombed ten churches in Baghdad and others in Mosul, killing a dozen worshippers during Sunday services.

Religious leaders say that barely half of Iraq’s 700,000 Christians, who were protected under Saddam Hussein, remain in the country as militias linked to some of the ruling parties try to impose Islam by force.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2133517,00.html

One Church's Easter Gift to Another

Washington Post

(Mark says: I'm still catching up on reading from April thru June.)

Ashburn Worshipers Send Pews to Hurricane-Struck Miss. Congregation

By Arianne Aryanpur, Washington Post Staff Writer; Sunday, April 16, 2006; Page LZ01

In February, the membership of Crossroads United Methodist Church in Ashburn (Virginia) decided that its sanctuary needed an extreme makeover. It would become a more flexible space, allowing the church to use the sanctuary for more purposes than Sunday-morning services. The altar and pulpit would be moved forward and made level with the rest of the room, and the rigid wooden pews would be replaced with padded, stackable chairs

But what was Crossroads to do with those pews? They were barely more than a decade old, too new to chuck into the trash dump.

They heard about a congregation in a Mississippi town, Escatawpa, population 3,566 in 2000, that had been dealt a cruel blow by Hurricane Katrina. The Rev. Willie Hill estimated that 90 percent of his congregation at Summerville United Methodist Church lost homes or businesses because of the hurricane.

In the months afterward, Summerville managed to restore most of what the wind and water had destroyed. But it did not have the $12,000 needed to replace the rotting pews.

Crossroads' unneeded pews, church members quickly decided, should go to Summerville. The plan was to have them installed in time for Easter services. The maroon cushions and wood frames arrived in Escatawpa just as crews finished painting the walls (maroon and white, to match the new cushions) and laying new red carpet.

Crossroads also sent along a surprise: Bibles, hymnals and choir robes to replace those ruined in the storm surge.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/15/AR2006041500019.
html

An Affront to Civilization

National Review Editorial

The trial of Abdul Rahman, who faces a potential death sentence for converting to Christianity some 15 years ago, is an affront to civilization. Killing or jailing someone for his religious beliefs is always wrong, and is especially galling in a country so dependent on American military forces and aid.

Conservatives in this country have been admirably willing to accept the compromises and frustrations that come with President Bush's attempts to reform recalcitrant parts of the world. The judicial murder of a Christian convert by a government that exists only on the basis of American power and good will, however, would be intolerable.

http://www.nationalreview.com/editorial/editors200603220953.asp

Free Abdul Rahman

Washington Times Editorial

Washington Times Editorial

The case of Abdul Rahman, who faces execution in Afghanistan for having become a Christian 15 years ago, is about as clear-cut as it could be. A democracy founded on the principles of freedom and tolerance does not kill religious dissenters. This was why Afghanistan under the Taliban was considered one of the most oppressive countries in the world. What have American soldiers achieved if they have not eliminated this barbaric medieval legacy?

We expect the administration to use all the leverage it can, which is considerable, to set Mr. Rahman free -- and not only for Mr. Rahman's sake. American soldiers and their families, not to mention taxpayers, have sacrificed much to free Afghanistan. The execution of Christians simply because they are Christians is not what they had in mind.

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20060322-090715-8777r.htm

Congratulating ourselves

Los Angeles Times

Conservatives have questioned the administration's support for democratic governments in Islamic countries.

"How can we congratulate ourselves for liberating Afghanistan from the rule of jihadists only to be ruled by radical Islamists who kill Christians?" wrote Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, a lobbying group, in a letter this week to Bush and congressional leaders.

Afghanistan's new constitution calls for religious freedom of expression, but the document has an unresolved conflict with Sharia, which does not permit conversions out of Islam.

Mawlawi Ghulam Haider, 75, a mullah in a Kabul mosque, said: "If somebody becomes a Christian or converts to any other religion than Islam, he must be given a chance over three days to think and return to Islam. If he returns to Islam, he can live happily ever after. But if he doesn't turn back … he will be punished by death."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-usafghan24mar24,0,3398976.st
ory?track=tottext

Spring Ache

New Orleans Times-Picayune

Thousands of college students who might have spent spring break sunning in Acapulco or on Florida beaches this year are pouring into New Orleans to sleep in dormitory tents or on classroom floors, eat off paper plates and spend a week of vacation hauling foul muck out of homes ruined by floodwaters.

-- Campus Crusade for Christ, a network of campus ministries, has sent 4,400 students to New Orleans this week, the peak of the spring break season, spokesman Tony Arnold said.

-- The Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board has more than 1,500 students here this week, spokesman Steve Manfredi said.

-- Common Ground Collective, a secular grassroots organization of young social progressives, has about 1,000 students on the ground doing demolition, health care, day care, after-school tutoring and other tasks, said Lisa Fithian, a veteran activist from Austin who has been in New Orleans since September.

-- Opportunity Rocks 2006: Rebuilding the Gulf Coast, a network led by former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., has nearly 700 college students from 27 states working in Chalmette.

-- United Methodist churches around New Orleans are housing and dispatching more than 1,000 students to work sites daily during this week, said the Rev. Yvonne Dayries, a coordinator at the denomination's headquarters in Baton Rouge.

-- Lutheran encampments in Metairie, Kenner and St. Tammany house 300 volunteers working around the region.

Four major encampments in Chalmette, Algiers, at City Park and in the Lower 9th Ward house more than 5,000 students. Many more are bedded down in independent churches or private homes. The students are scattered around the area, but most are concentrated in the flood zones of New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish.

In shorts and rubber boots, bandannas and face masks, they immerse themselves in the wreckage. Often a boom box pumps out music to relieve the work. But the experience remains sobering.

http://www.nola.com/archives/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1142582050218460.xml&col
l=1

Democratic Apostasy

Prison Fellowship - Chuck Colson

by Chuck Colson

The irony is inescapable: This is the country that we rid of the Taliban because of its religious oppression. This is the country in which we have spent at least $70 billion to establish a free democratic government. This is the country whose freedom cost us three hundred American lives and eight hundred casualties. And this is the country that is preparing to execute a man for becoming a Christian after he witnessed other Christians caring for his countrymen.

Is this the fruit of democracy? Is this why we have shed American blood and invested American treasure to set a people free? What have we accomplished for overthrowing the Taliban? This is the kind of thing we would expect from the Taliban, not from President Karzai and his freely elected democratic government.

I have supported the Bush administration’s foreign policy because I came to believe that the best way to stop Islamo-fascism was by promoting democracy. But if we can’t guarantee fundamental religious freedoms in the countries where we establish democratic reforms, then the whole credibility of our foreign policy is thrown into serious question. I hope the president and the administration can recognize what a devastating setback Rahman’s execution would be to the cause of democracy and freedom.

http://www.pfm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=BreakPoint1&Template=/CM/ContentDispl
ay.cfm&ContentID=18289

Voluntourism

Washington Post

By Linton Weeks, Washington Post Staff Writer

NEW ORLEANS -- Anita McClendon, 48, and about a dozen other volunteers were gutting the innards of the flood-ravaged Greater Little Zion Baptist Church in the Lower Ninth Ward. It was tough, sweaty work, and for some of the volunteers, it was their vacation.

McClendon, a health care worker from Oakland, Calif., was here for three weeks, ripping down demolished buildings by day -- and dancing to zydeco by night. She and thousands of other volunteers are combining work and play to help rebuild this devastated city.

This month, they are being joined by hundreds of college students spending spring break here and on Mississippi's Gulf Coast. They include 200 students from Howard University, more than 40 from George Washington University and more than two dozen from American University's Washington College of Law. The effort is dubbed "voluntourism," and local leaders say it is critical to the rebuilding because it provides dollar-spending fun lovers and hammer-wielding fixer-uppers all rolled into one. The more than 1,000 students expected here in the coming weeks will clean out houses and churches and day-care centers.

The Web site www.VolunTourism.org points out that the combination of volunteerism and tourism dates back centuries: Missionaries, sailors, explorers and others performed social services while visiting new places. The modern iteration began in the 1960s with the launching of the Peace Corps. Study-abroad programs in the 1970s and ecotourism in the 1980s expanded the notion. Volunteer vacations, with organizations such as Earthwatch, really took hold in the 1990s.

Habitat for Humanity, the Georgia-based home-building group for low-income families, offers voluntourism opportunities, called "global village trips," around the world. Spokesman Duane Bates said, "They build houses during the day and enjoy cultural activities at night."

Through Habitat, volunteers are helping to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region. Since January, more than 1,300 people have worked for the group in the greater New Orleans area.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/14/AR2006031401536.
html

Girls gone mild - a different kind of spring break

San Francisco Chronicle

by C.W. Nevius

A growing number of college students are opting for spending the spring break week volunteering for good causes.

Erin Cooper, a third-year student at UC Berkeley, is going to the party-hearty hotbed of Tijuana. She wants to help improve conditions for border patrols, raise awareness of domestic violence within Mexico and, just for kicks, help out in organizing labor unions among migrant workers.

Some of her classmates are going to New Orleans to join in the cleanup. Still others are headed to Mexico to lend a hand in impoverished communities.

Cooper says the move toward constructive, even philanthropic, spring breaks is only natural among students today. "I think there has definitely been an increase in community service in the last 10 years," she said. "I think a lot of us got into it when we were in high school because we had to do it to get into college, and it carried on from there."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/14/NEVIUS.TMP&nl=top

Job gains bring out job seekers, so unemployment rate rises

San Jose Mercury News

By Frank Michael Russell, Mercury News Assistant Business Editor

Now that employers are finally adding to their payrolls, many long-suffering job seekers are returning to the workforce. In fact, they're returning in numbers so huge that the unemployment rate climbed in February, even as employers added 243,000 payroll jobs.

The unemployment rate was still relatively low at 4.8 percent, up from 4.7 percent in January, the Labor Department reported today. "You are seeing a large number of people coming out of the woodwork because there are jobs to be found. People are now looking for jobs because it is now worth looking," said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services, according to an Associated Press report. (The Labor Department doesn't count an individual as unemployed unless that person is actively looking for work.)

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/columnists/business_update/1
4069043.htm

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/14066669.htm

Mark says: Doh! I could have told you that.

God by the Numbers

Christianity Today

Three numbers in particular suggest evidence for God's existence. They are 1/10¹⁰¹²³, 10¹⁶², and e^πi.

The fine-tuning of the four physical forces and the presence of one habitable planet are just two of the components that would go into a formula to predict the probability of a life-supporting universe. Oxford professor Roger Penrose discusses it in his book The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind. Penrose says the number is 1 in 10 to the 10 to the 123.

The second number that points to God comes from the field of biology. William Dembski, in The Creation Hypothesis, suggests the following argument. The odds against getting 1,000 beneficial mutations in the proper order is 2¹⁰⁰⁰. Expressed in decimal form, this number is about 10³⁰¹. 10³⁰¹ mutations is a number far beyond the capacity of the universe to generate. The chance of getting 1,000 beneficial mutations out of all the mutations the universe can generate is 10¹³⁹ divided by 10³⁰¹, or 1 chance in 10¹⁶².

A mathematics professor at MIT, an atheist, once wrote this formula on the blackboard, saying, "There is no God, but if there were, this formula would be proof of his existence."

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/003/26.44.html

Mississippi's Post-Katrina Boom

Washington Post

By Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post Staff Writer

BILOXI, Miss. -- On a recent Saturday night, traffic inching toward the 1,100-room Imperial Palace Hotel and Casino backed up for a mile on Interstate 110. Inside, gamblers jammed all 52 tables and 1,900 slot machines on the casino's three burgundy-carpeted floors.

Six months after Hurricane Katrina smashed through a fragile necklace of Mississippi coastal towns, the region is enjoying a post-storm boom. Fueled by insurance money, federal reconstruction aid and speculative capital, surviving hotels and restaurants are filled to overflowing, beachfront land prices are soaring, and developers are placing billion-dollar bets that shattered antebellum mansions will give rise to condominium resorts.

The guarded optimism is tempered by continued human suffering in one of the nation's poorest states, where 36,000 families remain housed in trailers and hundreds more live in plywood barracks and tents in the winter chill. To the west, the smaller towns of Waveland (population 7,100), Bay St. Louis (8,300) and Pass Christian (6,800) remain largely obliterated by Katrina.

"It's going to be a long journey -- we know that," said Pass Christian Mayor Billy McDonald, whose beach colony lost every business that generated sales taxes and 75 percent of its housing. Only about 2,000 residents remain. "First, we have to get cleaned up. Then we have to get people to come back. The hard part is in front of us."

But evidence of short-term recovery is everywhere in the cities President Bush visited this week. In Biloxi, a city of 50,000 that lost a quarter of its structures to Katrina, the three casinos that have reopened did $63 million of business in January -- close to the $83 million taken in by the city's nine gambling venues a year ago.

Brent Warr, mayor of neighboring Gulfport (population 72,000), said the nation's discovery of the area's 26 miles of white-sand beaches has boosted land prices along the devastated shoreline by 50 percent -- between $1 million and $2 million an acre. Investors are also seizing on federal post-storm tax legislation, which lets companies immediately write off half the cost of new investments.

Although the storm drew no distinctions between rich and poor, middle- and upper-class residents are rebuilding. But low-income people, fixed-income seniors and renters in poor, low-lying areas -- about 20 percent of the storm victims -- are being squeezed out by demolition and redevelopment, according to such groups as Oxfam America.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/09/AR2006030902151.
html

US students toil on Katrina relief for spring break

Alternet, Reuters

By Jeffrey Jones

PASS CHRISTIAN, Miss., March 6 (Reuters) - It isn't the spring-break beach holiday most U.S. college students dream of, but with the shore still strewn with wreckage and homes in shambles from Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Coast is the destination of choice for thousands.

College kids from across the United States have answered the call to forsake March parties in Daytona Beach, Florida, and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in favor of fixing and cleaning homes, schools and community centers in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Their holiday accommodation is a wind-battered auditorium jammed with cots and sleeping bags.

7,000 students have been marshaled by Campus Crusade for Christ. The United Way and MTV are sending 100 spring breakers to Biloxi and Foley, Alabama. Many students are paying their own way and some have held pledge drives to fund trips to sites where the work is hard and accommodations spartan.

The temporary influx in Pass Christian, a town of 6,500 people, has created few problems for locals despite scant resources, said Lieut. Greg Federico of the Harrison Country Sheriff's Dept. Many displaced residents still live in green military tents. "It means extra hands. And we absolutely need any help," he said. In fact, students began arriving just after Katrina and "they've been just working their butts off."

About 60 miles (100 km) west in New Orleans, where some neighborhoods remain in a state of suspended ruin, grassroots aid group Common Ground Relief expects 1,000-2,000 students to join its cleanup and community relief work in poor areas.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N06354275.htm

Complexity causes 50% of product returns

Washington Post

Reuters

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores by consumers are in full working order, but customers can't figure out how to operate the devices, a scientist said on Monday.

Product complaints and returns are often caused by poor design, but companies frequently dismiss them as "nuisance calls."

Consumers find it hard to install and use the wave of versatile electronics gadgets has flooded the market in recent years.

The average consumer in the United States will struggle for 20 minutes to get a device working, before giving up, the study found.

Product developers, brought in to witness the struggles of average consumers, were astounded by the havoc they created.

She also gave new products to a group of managers from consumer electronics company Philips, asking them to use them over the weekend. The managers returned frustrated because they could not get the devices to work properly.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/06/AR2006030600525.
html

Mark says: The essence of engineering is being able to look ahead and predict problems that will occur with the design, development, and deployment of a product. These problems shows that consumer devices suffer from a lack of proper engineering and usability analysis. These problems should have been known before the products were sold.

Churches vs. Starbucks

London News-Telegraph

By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent

More than 1,000 new Christian churches have been created over the last seven years, double the number of Starbucks coffee shops, new research has found.

All the major denominations opened new churches but the biggest growth was among the black Pentecostal churches. The remaining new churches were scattered among the mainstream denominations.

About 450 branches of Starbucks were opened over the same period.

(Mark says: NOTE this was in England)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/27/nchur27.xml&sShe
et=/news/2006/02/27/ixhome.html

The Simpsons vs. The First Amendment

Yahoo News, AP

By Anna Johnson, Associated Press

Only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.)

The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just one in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060301/ap_on_re_us/freedom_poll

Learning to Listen to God

Christianity Today

by Philip Yancey

I've become more convinced than ever that God finds ways to communicate with those who truly seek him, especially when we lower the volume of the surrounding static. I remember reading the account of a spiritual seeker who interrupted a busy life to spend a few days in a monastery. "I hope your stay is a blessed one," said the monk who showed the visitor to his cell. "If you need anything, let us know, and we'll teach you how to live without it."

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/003/21.112.html

The Joke Is on Katrina

Los Angeles Times

"Chasing after Moses, the Pharaoh came to the shore of the parted Red Sea, cast his eyes toward the heavens and asked God, 'Lord, may we also cross?' God replied, 'Sure, Pharaoh. I don't see why not. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers swears the walls are secure and it won't flood.' "

— Joke told by engineers in New Orleans

"I just got back from Vegas. You'd think the people in Las Vegas would be different than us here in New Orleans, but they're not.

They're all walking around saying, 'I lost everything. I lost the car. I lost the house ...' "

— Comic Jodi Borrello, performing in front of shipyard workers

"I Stayed in New Orleans for Katrina and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt, a New Cadillac and a Plasma TV."

— We really saw this T-shirt in New Orleans

"Being an evacuee changes every aspect of your life, doesn't it? It changes your dating life, I can tell you that much. I'm in Houston and I'm talking to this woman, and things are going pretty well. I said, 'You want to go back to my place?' She said, 'Sure, I'd love to.' I said, 'Yeah, so would I.' "

— Comic Strecker, performing at Lucy's

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-humor1mar01,0,4953518.story

God's Katrina Kitchen

Christianity Today

by Deann Alford

On August 29, Katrina made landfall just west of Pass Christian (pronounced "Christy Ann") on Mississippi's coast. The 30-foot storm surge killed 22 people, destroyed nearly all business property, and damaged or destroyed 90 percent of the town's homes. Pass Christian is one of the communities most devastated by Katrina. By January, only 1,500 of Pass Christian's 6,500 residents remained. The rest are scattered nationwide, joining 2 million other hurricane refugees across America.

Pass Christian's government is in tatters. Like virtually all Pass Christian residents, city leaders suffered grave personal loss. City Hall is now in a doublewide trailer. The storm set back the city 150 years, to its early days as a rustic resort area. Little of the tax base remains, nor does any meaningful employment beyond contract work for cleanup and debris removal.

The Red Cross has left town, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has scaled back. Other major agencies, such as the Salvation Army, are often outmatched by the size and complexity of the needs.

Greg Porter, who had cooked for an inner-city ministry, stepped into the hunger gap. His church, Christian Fellowship, provided supplies. He and his team of five drove a mobile kitchen from Indiana to Pass Christian, arriving September 14. They set up on a median and turn lane of crippled Interstate 90. Their first meal provided 125 free hamburgers.

After Hurricane Rita passed by, crews moved to a city-owned lot, which is now filled with donated refrigerated trailers, storage containers, and a big tent dining room. Their canopied kitchen includes industrial-grade appliances that create meals from food shipped from across the nation, all of which is donated. An Evansville radio station has solicited volunteers for the operation. In late October, a station broadcaster christened it "God's Katrina Kitchen." Its motto is posted at the entrance: "Not One Church, But One God."

Kitchen crews daily serve 1,500 hot breakfasts, lunches, and dinners to residents, relief workers, police, road repairmen, soldiers from Biloxi's heavily damaged Keesler Air Force Base, and anybody else who's hungry—free of charge, no id required. A donation box sits by the serving line.

God's Katrina Kitchen includes a clothing center, a food pantry, and tables with Bibles and Christian literature. Volunteers who distribute food and clothing often share the gospel with those receiving aid. Nightly worship services feature music and speakers from across America.

Until mid-December, the Colbys ate supper several times weekly at God's Katrina Kitchen. Pastor Colby found that both victims and volunteers bore a heavy emotional load. He labels it "Katrina brain." But the summer camp-like environment at God's Katrina Kitchen provides a daily occasion for people to break bread and talk about what they face.

The collaboration between Christian groups has impressed Pass Christian's politicians. Christians represent 95 percent of relief volunteers, said Lou Rizzardi, Pass Christian's Ward 1 alderman who coordinates them.

Crusade volunteers share the gospel with every family they help. Nonbelievers are far more receptive to the message after seeing faith in action.

DEET-resistent gnats, more prevalent than ever, leave welts that itch and sting weeks later. Razor wire, used to block roads immediately after the storm, remains strewn along railroad tracks. Dreamlike morning fog that rolls over the community might seem romantic if it didn't envelop a vision from hell. Cleanup alone will take two years. Rebuilding Pass Christian will take much longer.

University Crusade groups and ten Christmas Conference gatherings nationwide have promoted spring-break work trips to the region. Rick Amos, Crusade's Katrina relief coordinator, told CT that during spring break, "There will be just as much evangelism in Pass Christian and New Orleans as there will be in Panama City [Florida]."

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/003/19.60.html

911 calls to be directly routed to city police

San Jose Mercury News

By Gary Richards, Mercury News

This month Los Gatos and Menlo Park join a growing list of cities where drivers making emergency calls from local streets will have 911 calls directly routed to city police, easing the pressure on the understaffed Highway Patrol.

San Jose is on board, as are most cities in Santa Clara County and along the Peninsula. Union City and Alameda are the only two East Bay cities taking local 911 cell calls on city streets, but more hope to.

All of the major cell phone companies, with the exception of Nextel, now have the ability to route 911 calls to the closest dispatch center.

Under the new system, city police can pinpoint the general location of calls on streets within city limits. Older phone models provide a phone number, cell carrier and cell tower that is being used along with GPS coordinates of the tower. Newer cell phones with a GPS chipset beam back the same information as well as GPS coordinates of the phone in use.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/transportation/13972237.htm

Cross-Generational Square Dance TOMORROW Feb 28

San Jose Mercury News

I'm not sure where else to post this notice, so here goes:

Cross-Generational Square Dance. Families with children ages five and older and seniors welcome. 6:30 p.m. Feb. 28. West Hope Presbyterian Church, 12850 Saratoga Ave., Saratoga. $3-$10. (408) 730-4684.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/events/13972263.htm

Four free ways to stop spyware

San Francisco Chronicle

Lavasoft Ad-aware SE 1.06
Cnet rating: 7.6 out of 10 (Very good)

Tenebril SpyCatcher Express
Cnet rating: 7.2 out of 10 (Very good)

Spybot Search & Destroy
Cnet rating: 6.7 out of 10 (Good)

Microsoft Windows Defender beta 2
Cnet rating: 6.5 out of 10 (Good)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/27/CNET.TMP

Mississippi Casinos Trump Katrina

Los Angeles Times

By Richard Fausset, Times Staff Writer

BILOXI, Miss. — Nearly six months after the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, the good times are rolling. The gamblers are back, and they are bringing huge amounts of money to this beaten coastline's most important industry.

Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, destroying most of the waterfront casinos and shuttering the remainder. Some economists and tourism officials predicted that their comeback — if it occurred at all — would be slow going.

But the Isle of Capri and two other casinos resumed business in December, and since then have attracted thousands of visitors who have helped the gaming industry post surprisingly strong numbers. In January, the three casinos pulled in nearly $64 million in gross gaming revenue, according to the Mississippi Gaming Commission. The previous January, the total in Biloxi was $90 million — when the city had nine casinos in business.

In October, the Mississippi Legislature changed the law to allow onshore casinos within 800 feet of the shoreline. The casinos got another boost when Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) helped them win federal tax relief to rebuild.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-casino25feb25,0,3293245.sto
ry

Deaf Church Wins Land Value Battle

Los Angeles Times

By Dan Weikel, Times Staff Writer

A small church that has served the deaf community in Riverside County for decades will receive more than $4.5 million to settle allegations that Caltrans grossly undervalued the congregation's property when it was condemned to make way for new ramps on Interstate 215.

Calvary Deaf Church and Caltrans resolved their dispute Tuesday shortly after Superior Court Judge Gloria Trask tentatively ruled that Caltrans' original appraisal of $1.65 million was flawed and outdated. A trial had been scheduled for Monday.

Calvary Deaf Church, which has about 45 members, was founded in 1956 by Beatrice and John Berry, two Assemblies of God ministers. It is one of a handful of congregations in the region that specifically serve hearing-impaired people.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-caltrans22feb22,1,2015589.story

$3,200,000,000 and rising for Katrina relief

Christianity Today, The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Some organizations have raised so much money for Katrina relief that they're not taking any more, says The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Charities have raised about $3.2 billion, according to the publication's survey. Among the top recipients: The Salvation Army ($325M), Catholic Charities USA ($154.5M), Habitat for Humanity ($95M), The United Methodist Committee on Relief ($62.4M), Samaritan's Purse ($36.9M), Southern Baptist Convention Disaster Relief ($20.1M), and World Vision ($10.9M).

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/108/41.0.html

http://philanthropy.com/free/articles/v18/i09/09005001.htm

Katrina Report Urges Retooled Disaster Plans

Washington Post

By Christopher Lee and Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post Staff Writers

The White House proposed a major restructuring of federal preparedness and response efforts for catastrophic natural disasters yesterday, saying the government's failures in coping with Hurricane Katrina had laid bare the inadequacy of steps taken since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In a 228-page report that emphasized bureaucratic problems rather than failures of leadership, White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend detailed a host of problems in the federal approach to the most destructive natural disaster in the nation's history. The report contained 125 recommendations for improvement -- including 11 critical steps to be taken before the next hurricane season begins June 1.

The report echoed many of the findings of a special House committee, which issued its report last week.

A Senate committee is at work on its own report, and the Government Accountability Office has undertaken a comprehensive review. But there is no independent commission looking into the government's response to the hurricane, as there was after the 2001 attacks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/23/AR2006022300236.
html

Mark says: How many damn reports do we need, anyway? Keep them congress-persons too busy to do other damage, I guess.

Billy Graham the Pastor

USA Today

By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

The Journey: How to Live By Faith in an Uncertain World, by Billy Graham, will be in bookstores March 7.

"The book begins where a crusade leaves off. It's about being a Christian, not becoming one," says Graham's spokesman, A. Larry Ross. "It's his legacy, encapsulating the essence of his sermons, writings and recordings on what it means to be a follower of Christ."

There's no news in The Journey but the Good News, the translation of "Gospel." There are no bloggable bits where he slams people or pounds political views. He writes about, but never names, a "well-known Christian leader" with an impressive "zeal for truth" who was missing "a love for others (especially those who disagreed with him)."

The book's four parts focus on the basic elements of the Christian life: discovering God's love, building strength, facing challenges and finally, family life, aging and death.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2006-02-20-graham-book_x.htm

Wrapped in Prayer, Marines Leave for Iraq Duty

Los Angeles Times

By Tony Perry, Times Staff Writer

CAMP PENDLETON — Navy Lt. Jim Peugh, a Protestant chaplain, led the 100-plus Marines of Combat Logistics Battalion 5 in a prayer asking God to "be with us" as the battalion returns to Iraq and also to protect the families left behind.

"You need to be strong and you need to pray that they're all coming back, all of them," said Bev Singleton, the mother of Staff Sgt. Mikel Travis, 30. "These are all my sons and my daughters, every one of them."

It was a morning for spouses to trade secrets on how to endure the uncertainty of the deployment.

"Don't watch the news, be hopeful when he calls and don't bother him with problems. Just give him positives," suggested Carrie Strickland, 21, whose husband, Sgt. Chris Strickland, 23, is an explosive ordnance technician.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-troops20feb20,1,7023863.story

Storm can't crush a town's heart

Los Angeles Times

By Elizabeth Mehren, Times Staff Writer

Six months after Hurricane Katrina, entire blocks have been bulldozed, leaving eerie empty spaces — like missing teeth — where quaint neighborhoods once stood. "The Pass," as everyone calls it, is a patchwork of FEMA trailers, RVs and pop-up tents. The town center is a field of drab-green Army tents used as dwellings and offices. City Hall is a double-wide trailer, as are the police station and library.

"We can't escape the devastation. It's everywhere," said Martha Murphy, who has lived here for most of her 54 years. "But we see Pass Christian through our hearts, not just our eyes. We know it is going to change. We just want to retain what it had that made us love it."

About two-thirds of the town's 6,500 residents have returned — enough families that 7 out of 10 children who were enrolled in Pass Christian schools before the storm are attending classes in neighboring areas where schools were less damaged.

Every public building in town was destroyed by Katrina, along with almost all the businesses and about 80% of the homes. Pass Christian's tax rolls dropped from 4,000 structures to 170.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-pass21feb21,0,1760575.story
?track=tottext

Everything just disintegrated

USA Today

By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY

More than five months after Hurricane Katrina leveled much of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, people here are still struggling mightily to restore some sense of normalcy.

The raw numbers are staggering: More than half a million people in Mississippi have applied for assistance from FEMA. In a state with just 2.9 million residents, that means more than one in six Mississippians have sought help. More than 97,000 people are still living in FEMA trailers and mobile homes. Another 5,000 to 6,000 are still waiting for FEMA trailers.

Despite a massive cleanup, many neighborhoods are still piled high with storm debris.

There is a lot of anger and frustration here: At insurance companies that accepted premiums for decades and are now, in the opinion of residents, dragging their feet or balking at paying off. At FEMA, which is doing a lot but is the main face of the federal government and therefore the target of much ire. At the media for focusing so much attention on New Orleans that Mississippians often feel their pain is being overlooked.

"You never see Waveland, Bay St. Louis or Pass Christian on the news, and we were the hardest hit," Linda Penrose says. "People do not know the devastation down here because the cameras do not come back here. Everything just disintegrated. I don't think they want people to see how bad it was."

Insurance problems plague the powerful and the not-so-powerful alike. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., have joined thousands of fellow Mississippians suing their insurer, State Farm Fire & Casualty, for refusing to cover property losses from Katrina.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-15-katrina-penrose_x.htm

TV Theology

USA Today

Watch for reincarnation Hindu-esque style if an Ashton Kutcher-produced sitcom lands on TV in the fall. For Pete's Sake is actually an interfaith goof: St. Peter plays bouncer at the Pearly Gates, sending five main characters off to rebirth instead of hell, garbling both Christian and Hindu theology.

After all, there's no law that TV or movies must teach correct doctrine, says Dick Staub, a writer on faith and culture for Christianity Today online.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/2006-02-15-hindu-lite_x.htm

Mark sez: You mean the Jesus on South Park isn't the real Jesus?

The Church of Katrina

Yahoo News, AP

If it weren't for the faith-based groups helping out, the city of Waveland would be half the size it is now.

Katrina ravaged Mississippi's Gulf Coast, leaving roughly $125 billion in damage in its wake and nearly wiping some cities off the map. Waveland is still littered with massive amounts of debris, and police estimate fewer than 1,500 of its 6,600 residents have returned since the storm hit Aug. 29.

With government agencies stretched thin by the massive scope of the Gulf Coast recovery effort, groups from every conceivable religious denomination are shouldering a heavy share of the workload.

Amish and Mennonites are mucking out and rebuilding homes across the coast, with dozens living together at a religious-affiliated summer camp in Pass Christian. Lutheran and Islamic groups are providing free medical care to thousands in Biloxi. Southern Baptists have cooked an estimated 14 million meals in New Orleans and other hard-hit communities. The Salvation Army has had roughly 52,000 people working in Louisiana and Mississippi since the storm.

"We feel it's our duty to do it because it's God's work," said Amish volunteers who have gutted more than 300 homes in Waveland alone.

Tens of thousands of volunteers from hundreds of faith-based groups have poured into the region. That virtually bottomless well of labor makes them a valuable resource for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which helps coordinate their efforts to avoid duplication.

Volunteer groups have been the "only show in town" as the work shifted from emergency relief to long-term recovery and rebuilding, said Ken Skalitzky, FEMA's voluntary agency liaison for Mississippi, Alabama and six other states.

In December, FEMA doled out $66 million in Katrina-related grants for 10 social service and volunteer groups, including Catholic Charities, Episcopal Relief and Development, Lutheran Disaster Response and the United Methodist Foundation of Louisiana.

Amish volunteers, who rotate through Waveland every week or two, will be here for several years. They recently trucked in prefabricated homes for roughly 60 people, setting them up on property near the remnants of Gulfside United Methodist Assembly, a church retreat that Katrina leveled.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060216/ap_on_re/religion_today

Silicon Valley Habitat for Humanity

San Jose Mercury News

Bay City News Service

The Milpitas-based non-profit organization Silicon Valley Habitat for Humanity plans to begin construction on six attached town-style homes at 2255 Gianera St. in Santa Clara this fall and is now accepting applications from county residents.

The homes are scheduled for completion by late fall of 2007.

Santa Clara officials agreed to foot the bill for the properties the homes will stand on and, as part of this deal, preference will be given to people who live or work in the city.

The six Santa Clara homes are part of a larger effort to construct 29 new homes in the next three years.

Habitat for Humanity, which has already built 28 homes in Santa Clara County for 28 families with a total of 95 children, strives to build decent, affordable houses for low-income families, Freiri said.

People with disabilities are encouraged to apply to purchase the new homes, one of which will be constructed to meet the needs of people with mobility impairments, and another that will be accessible to those with sensory disabilities, according to the organization.

http://www.mercurynews.com:80/mld/mercurynews/news/13897364.htm

Drunk Drivers' Penalty: Play Mahjong

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

Drunk drivers in Taiwan can now choose their penalty: Pay a fine or play mahjong with the elderly.

Playing the popular Chinese tile game of mahjong with token money has taught offenders to love and care for the elderly.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2006/02/16/international/i
160857S42.DTL&type=bondage

Home sales falter, hinting at slowdown

San Francisco Chronicle

by Kelly Zito, Chronicle Staff Writer

Bay Area home sales tumbled to their lowest level in five years last month, and prices hovered well below record territory, further evidence that the region's seemingly unstoppable housing boom may have peaked with the blistering market of 2005.

January's performance is the latest sign of a cool-off that began 10 months ago when sales counts began declining. Experts have attributed the loss of steam to higher interest rates, prices climbing beyond the reach of many consumers and the inevitable maturing of the decade-old housing boom.

Last month, nearly 36 percent fewer houses and condos sold in the nine-county region in January compared with December and 20 percent fewer compared with January 2005, real estate information firm DataQuick reported Thursday. The month's total was 6,004; it usually ranges between 4,000 and 7,500.

Prices, while still up notably on a year-to-year basis, fell below autumn peaks. The median for a single-family home stood at $628,000, up 13 percent from last January, but 4 percent under November's $656,000. The condo median hit $475,000, up from $410,000 last January but below the October record of $490,000.

Clearly, the market is shifting to a lower gear as real estate agents report fewer bidding wars and a jump in the number of properties for sale. But housing experts are divided on how long the respite will last and whether 10 consecutive months of declining sales activity foreshadow falling -- or merely stalling -- prices.

For some hint of the Bay Area's trajectory, DataQuick analyst John Karevoll pointed to San Diego, which has been termed the "canary in the coal mine" by economists who have watched closely as that city's price growth rocketed north of 26 percent in late 2004. A short time later, sales totals plunged, and price appreciation has sunk to about 2.5 percent annually.

But other experts think the Bay Area's high-flying market is due for a steeper correction.

Real estate agents -- who are usually among the first to sense changes in the market -- say power is now balanced between buyers and sellers after several years of rampant multiple offers, waived inspections and pleading "sell me your house" letters.

That new rubric was summed up earlier this week at a sales meeting at Zephyr Real Estate in San Francisco. Of the 25 sales, 12 properties went for above the asking prices, 9 went for the asking price and 4 sold for below. Some agents say they must price their listings more realistically and market them aggressively.

Michael Carney, executive director of the Real Estate Research Council of Northern California at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, theorizes that an initial softening market may only drive more buyers out of the woodwork, buoying prices and sales over the longer term. "People are saying we're going to have this collapse of the bubble, but I don't think we're going to have an enormous drop in home prices," Carney said. "One reason is that you have a whole lot of people out there hoping prices fall. Demand is still there somehow."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/17/HOMES.TMP&nl=top

World's best cyclists in 8-day, 600-mile road race

San Francisco Chronicle

by Steve Rubenstein, Chronicle Staff Writer

It's the Tour of California, an eight-day, 600-mile race from San Francisco to Southern California, modeled after the Tour de France and featuring more than 100 riders from 16 top teams. It's the biggest bike race ever to huff and puff into California, the sort of affair Lance Armstrong would be riding in if he hadn't broken every cyclist's heart by retiring.

It starts Sunday with a sprint in San Francisco. The next day, the pack pedals from Sausalito through the rural roads of Marin and Sonoma counties to Santa Rosa. After that, the affair proceeds from Martinez to San Jose before heading to Monterey, the Big Sur coast and the Los Angeles basin. The race is sponsored by Health Net and AEG, part of Anschutz Corp.

Leland Mew, a 56-year-old emergency room doctor, rode back and forth over the race route, from Lafayette to Moraga, checking his speed on his handlebar gizmo and lamenting that it was not quite the 28 mph that the pack of pros is expected to average. "But I'm doing OK for an old guy,'' Mew said.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/17/BIKES.TMP&nl=top

Mark sez: don't expect to see me in that pack.

The neighbor from hell

San Francisco Chronicle

I thought we had the neighbor from hell, but then I read about this one in San Leandro ...

'Dream' vehicles turn nightmarish

by Chip Johnson

The other day there were 11 vehicles at the home of Russ Daniels on Lewis Avenue in San Leandro, a fleet that included two trucks, two boats, two vans and three trailers used for various chores.

Neighbors are fed up with the battered convertibles, the bashed-in yellow BMW and the truck he keeps "for parts" on a trailer outside his home, and they want the city to force Daniels to clean up his act.

Last month, Daniels paid more than $3,000 in fines -- a six-month accumulation of parking tickets and citations for unregistered vehicles.

During the last five years, Daniels' Noah-like quest to gather two of every kind of vehicle imaginable -- and other items you couldn't describe -- has driven his neighbors completely bonkers. His eclectic collection has been the subject of conversation among a homeowners group of 1,500 members, at city planning commission meetings and at this week's City Council meeting, where blight was addressed.

Scott Warner, a Lewis Avenue resident who's tangled with Daniels, told the council that the city's efforts to keep Daniels in line have been ineffective. "You can't leave a trailer, a motor home and oversized vehicles out in the street, and have five in the backyard as well," Warner said. "This has been going on for at least three years." Warner recently presented the City Council with a petition bearing the signatures of 42 neighbors who want the city to force Daniels to remove his vehicles and clean up his yard.

In the last year, the tense relations that existed between Daniels and some of his neighbors have begun to boil over. His vehicles have been vandalized on several occasions.

Daniels realizes he isn't being neighborly. "I don't think it's OK to park all the vehicles here," he said. "Look at the hate that it's generated. It offends people."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/17/JOHNSON.TMP&nl=top

Contactless credit cards

San Francisco Chronicle

by Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer

Credit-card outfits are pushing a new payment technology called contactless cards that could speed your way through the checkout line.

Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover are promoting the tap-and-go cards for use when buying something quick and cheap -- garlic fries at AT&T Park, a Slurpee at 7-Eleven, a prescription at Walgreens, a Happy Meal at McDonald's, or movie tickets at AMC, Loews, Regal and Cinemark theaters. All of those merchants are installing special terminals to read the cards.

With a contactless card, the cashier rings up your sale, you hold your card (or cell phone or key fob) an inch or two above a radio-frequency reader, which quickly flashes green and beeps to indicate that you've paid. For purchases of less than $25, no signature is required.

The concept is similar to the FasTrak transponders Bay Area commuters use to pay bridge tolls, except that contactless cards must be read at a much closer range.

Contactless-card transactions average 15 seconds, according to Visa. That's less than half the 34 seconds for cash transactions and about a third faster than the 24 seconds for payments using traditional credit cards with magnetic stripes that must be swiped, it said.

Discover is testing cell phones with contactless chips.

Nationwide, about 20,000 merchant locations have installed about 120,000 contactless readers in the past year, many of them concentrated in a few geographic regions, such as Atlanta and New York.

To get a card, go to a credit-card brand Web site and look for links to issuers that offer them. Rather than giving you another piece of plastic to carry in your wallet, banks will simply add the contactless chips to mag-stripe credit cards, debit cards or prepaid cards. Those cards will then work both for traditional mag-stripe devices and the new contactless readers.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/17/CONTACTLESS.TMP&nl=to
p

They Haven’t Got Mail

Newsweek

By Mark Hosenball, Newsweek

The business world and government departments depend upon it, grade-school kids are taught how to use it and Osama bin Laden’s followers have become skilled practitioners. But congressional investigations of government responses to Hurricane Katrina have revealed that two of the nation’s key crisis managers, the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, do not use e-mail.

The House committee established to investigate Katrina was informed that neither Secretary Chertoff nor Secretary Rumsfeld use e-mail.

Spokesmen for the two officials maintain that Rumsfeld and Chertoff were kept informed during Katrina the same way as they keep in touch during other crises: through aides and a variety of other communications methods. Brian Besanceney, Chertoff’s top spokesman, said: “Every senior DHS official knows that, if they have important information to convey to the secretary, they go to his office or pick up the phone.”

But Dr. Irwin Redlener, a disaster-preparedness expert at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, expressed surprise that two officials in such critical positions would not be adept at routine methods of modern communication. “This can’t be true,” he said, only half-jokingly. “It’s almost inconceivable in 2006 for officials at that level of government not to be directly connected to systems of communications.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11371281/site/newsweek/

New Presidential $1 Coins

United States Mint to honor the Presidents of the United States

Beginning in 2007, the United States Mint will strike and issue new $1 coins to honor the Presidents of the United States. Mandated by Public Law 109-145, the coins will be issued at the rate of four per year, in the order in which they served. The Presidential $1 coins will carry new Presidential portraits on their obverse, or heads, side and will feature an image of the Statue of Liberty on their reverse, or tails, side.

From the US Mint web page, http://catalog.usmint.gov/

New Grant System Excludes Mac Users

Washington Post

By Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer

What if the federal government were about to give away more than $400 billion in grants, but only people whose computers ran on Microsoft software could apply?

That is the predicament that many scientists, scholars and others say they are in as the government enters the final phase of its five-year effort to streamline its grant-application process.

The problem: Although many U.S. scientists and others depend on graphics-friendly Macintosh computers, the software selected by the government is not Mac-compatible. And it is expected to remain so for at least a year.

"Uh, this would be the same government that spent a lot of time and money pursuing Microsoft for its anti-competitive behavior?" one blogger wrote. "And they now offer a government site that mandates monopoly?"

But the promise of making Grants.gov accessible to everyone remains unfulfilled because of a decision by Northrop Grumman and the Health and Human Services Department to give a small Canadian company called PureEdge Solutions the job of creating the electronic forms.

The PureEdge solution, it turns out, works only with the Windows operating system. And that is especially galling, several scientists said, as at least one major grant-making agency, the National Science Foundation, has for many years been using a "platform-independent" system that works seamlessly with all kinds of computers.

Critics note that in contrast to the domination of PCs in the business community, Macs constitute about one-third to one-half of the computers scientists and academicians use.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/12/AR2006021200942.
html

Parents Protest Child's Spelling Bee Loss

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

AP Breaking News

Eighth-grader Sara Beckman from Reno's O'Brien Middle School spelled "discernible" correctly during Tuesday's spelling bee at the University of Nevada, Reno. But the judge rang the bell anyway.

Her parents are furious, but organizers say they had to protest the call immediately. Sara's mom said they waited until the bee was over to avoid interrupting it.

Her mother Cindy calls herself a "momma bear with her bear claws out" and is ready to go to court.

School spokesman Steve Mulvenon says defending a lawsuit over a spelling bee isn't a good way to spend school district money.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/02/08/national/a131010S43.DTL

(Should I have put this in the "humor" category or not?)

Paw and Order: Meet Fred, undercover kitten

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

By Tom Hays, Associated Press Writer

Authorities on Wednesday introduced the 8-month-old former stray cat that posed as a would-be patient while police investigated a college student accused of treating pets without a license.

At a news conference, Fred sported a tiny badge on his collar as he posed for photos with owner Carol Moran, a prosecutor.

Fred shared the spotlight with Burt the Boston terrier, an alleged victim of Steven Vassall, 28, who was arrested last week and released on $2,500 bail.

Burt's owner, Raymond Reid, contacted authorities after the dog survived a botched operation. In hindsight, he said, he should have been suspicious of a veterinarian who only made house calls and treated animals at an undisclosed location.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/02/09/national/a115702S56.DTL

Miracle of Coyote Gulch

San Francisco Chronicle

Old dump in Presidio ravine now a haven for wildlife

by Jane Kay, Chronicle Environment Writer

A new push for restoration at the Presidio is turning toxic-waste dumps into wildlife habitat. The National Park Service, using $99 million from the former owner, the U.S. Army, is fixing up the 1,480-acre Presidio an acre at a time.

Watching the bird life with binoculars from Lincoln Boulevard, just north of the Baker Beach turnoff, San Francisco birder Josiah Clark is rattling off sightings.

Clark spotted a metallic green Anna's hummingbird with its rosy throat perched on the scrub. A common raven was patrolling the ground for rodents, and an American kestrel alighted on a post at Battery Crosby, an old military fortification. Red-tailed hawks were sparring in a Monterey cypress on a bluff overlooking the ravine.

From this spot where the narrow mouth of the Golden Gate stands in full view -- with the bridge invisible to the north -- Clark has seen harbor porpoises, surf scoters, red-throated loons and western grebes.

But it's the bird song unique to the local dunes that pleases Clark, a consulting ecologist who has worked on Presidio restoration for the Golden Gate National Park Conservancy.

One by one, he picked out the whistle of the Nuttall's white-crowned sparrow, the melodic call of the bright yellow meadowlark and the tinkling note of the bushtit. On the wind, he heard the trill of the song sparrow, the black phoebe's "fee-bee'' and the Bewick's wren's "peety, peety, peety.''

"The birds like a wet spot with a bunch of rushes,'' Clark said.

"Lots of birds are migrating through here. You add this new landscape and it bumps up the capacity for nesting in the Presidio.''

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/09/PRESIDIO.TMP&nl=top

Somebody turn it off!

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

Our new microwave oven beeps every 30 seconds until you take your finished food out. I thought that was obnoxious enough, until I read this ...

Stuck foghorn wails every few minutes

Associated Press

The tranquility of Monterey has been disturbed by a foghorn stuck at the end of the Coast Guard pier. The switch is stuck on "on" and nobody in the area knows how to fix it, Petty Officer 1st Class Lance Benedict said Tuesday.

So the foghorn wails every few minutes.

The foghorn and accompanying light at the end of the Coast Guard Pier off Lighthouse Avenue are meant to prevent water travelers from running into the breakwall, Benedict said.

During foggy conditions earlier in the week, the horn was turned on.

"We are just a search-and-rescue part of the Coast Guard," Benedict said, noting the Coast Guard's repair staff is based in San Francisco. They have been notified but it's unclear when the team will arrive, Benedict said.

The Big Easy Is Now Limbo Land

Washington Post

Slow-Moving Bureaucracy Leaves New Orleans Stuck in a Cycle of Waiting

By Linton Weeks, Washington Post Staff Writer

There are so many symbols of Limbo Land: Vast sections of the city are still without utilities. Without electricity, businesses can't open their doors; without open businesses, electric bills can't be paid. House-gutting companies advertise everywhere, but many homes are too far gone for gutting. Of an estimated 50 million cubic yards of hurricane and flood debris, about 6 million has been picked up, the city's Web site reported. Countless cars litter the landscape, rendered useless by the floodwaters. Ridership on buses and streetcars operated by the Regional Transit Authority has fallen from 855,000 rides per week before Katrina to 60,000 or fewer, according to a mid-January situation report by the Bring New Orleans Back commission. Only 17 of 122 public schools have reopened.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/08/AR2006020802401.
html?referrer=email

Storm Victims Face Big Delay to Get Trailers

New York Times

by Jennifer Steinhauer and Eric Lipton

Nearly six months after two hurricanes ripped apart communities across the Gulf Coast, tens of thousands of residents remain without trailers promised by the federal government for use as temporary shelter while they rebuild.

Of the 135,000 requests for trailers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has received from families, slightly more than half have been filled. The delays have left families holed up with relatives or stranded out of state, stalled local economies and infuriated state and local officials, who criticize how the program has been managed. Further, officials and residents complain about problems with quality, like poor plumbing and electrical shorts, with the trailers they have received.

Several Slidell city officials, including police officers, are still without trailers or just received them this week, and have been sleeping with friends or neighbors, and in one case, under a desk in a government office.

On Monday, frustrated by the delays, four members of the St. Bernard Parish Council performed what they called a symbolic act, taking three trailers from a local stockpile of about 275 and delivering them to residents.

"If this happened with any other business, you would find another purveyor," said Councilman Mark Madary, who represents a parish where 6,000 families are waiting for trailers and about 2,000 have received them.

The problems in administering the $4 billion trailer program mirror those of other major recovery efforts undertaken since the hurricanes crippled the region, and appear to be a result of failures at all levels of government. Local officials, contractors and residents say that some of the delays seem to stem from the federal government's poor planning and its frustrating layers of subcontractors and bureaucracy.

The goal from the start, particularly in Louisiana, was to find wide-open swaths of land where group sites, which have become known as FEMAvilles, could be set up. That was crucial because a large share of the homeless in Louisiana were renters who did not have their own property where FEMA could place a trailer. Even if they did, whole sections of New Orleans were still considered uninhabitable.

The contractors sent teams of surveyors to identify possible sites for these new trailer communities. But as they began to negotiate the permits required, local authorities and landowners, one after another, started to turn them down.

"There is a very strong message: not in my backyard," said Mark Misczak, who oversees the temporary housing effort for FEMA in Louisiana.

"If you needed a classic example of how to make every mistake humanly possible and then throw more mistakes on top of that, that is what you have with this trailer program," said Representative Gene Taylor, Democrat of Mississippi, a vocal critic of the program who lost his home in Bay St. Louis to Hurricane Katrina.

Shirley Harris, a 73-year-old Slidell resident, continues to live in a ramshackle house that was severely damaged by the storm. Ms. Harris said that FEMA had told her it could not install a trailer because she had electrical wires still hanging in front of her house. But looking across the street at a house with identical hanging wires and two FEMA trailers in the yard, she feels at a loss.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/national/nationalspecial/09trailers.html?pagew
anted=1&_r=1&th&adxnnl=0&emc=th&adxnnlx=1139474981-dZZ3FuEsMMaX9XNUEzNgNA

Fred Phelps Confronted

KAKE TV, Wichita

by Jeff Golimowski

KAKE's chief investigative reporter Jeff Golimowski went inside Fred Phelp's world looking for answers.

"God hates america," said Phelps. He offers no apologies. "Tthis country is hellbound, it's hopeless."

Phelps' church isn't a big place. About 60 people were there the Sunday we visited, 30 of them children. His sermon often rambles, he repeats himself, jumps from one topic to the next and is often tough to follow. He includes conspiracy theories and a lot of fire and brimstone.

Phelps views himself as an instrument of God's will, but what drives him to be so outlandish, so hateful?

"Those old baptist preachers delivered me a charge from Isiah 58:1," said Phelps. "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet and show thy people their transgressions."

We asked Phelps, "Do you preach hate?"

"Not in the perjorative sense I don't," said Phelps. "The truth of the matter is I'm the only one who loves these fags."

Phelps believes by pointing out what he calls the sin of homosexuality, he's fulfilling the Bible's commandment to love thy neighbor, but not letting his sin go unrebuked. "These kissypoo preachers that are telling them they are all right like they are, they don't love them, they hate them," said Phelps.

http://www.kake.com/home/headlines/2252792.html

By the Thousands, Faithful Toil to Resurrect Gulf Cities

Washington Post

Sojourners in the South Leave Behind Jobs, Schools, Lives

By Jacqueline L. Salmon, Washington Post Staff Writer

Since arriving in Biloxi with a convoy of supplies and volunteers from his Fairfax County church, Lord of Life Lutheran, shortly after Labor Day, Bart Tucker has spent a total of eight weeks here. He goes home only to raise more money and recruit more volunteers.

His efforts have rippled across Northern Virginia. Other faith organizations have joined in -- churches, Habitat for Humanity, Bible study groups -- sending members and money, forming partnerships with Biloxi churches and adopting families.

More than 10,000 religious people across the country have poured through the stricken Mississippi Gulf Coast in an unprecedented volunteer effort.

They sleep in church sanctuaries, RVs and tents. They leave behind jobs, schools and retirement for labor pilgrimages of days, weeks or months.

Tucker doesn't question God's purpose for his presence. "I'm just here," he said. "Whether I'm called in this direction, I'm not sure. I'm here."

The volunteers' focus: a seemingly endless horizon of destruction that stretches 70 miles. In Mississippi, 35,000 homes owned by residents who had no flood insurance were destroyed. Tens of thousands more were heavily damaged. Beyond this is Louisiana, where 77,000 homeowners with no flood insurance saw homes destroyed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020401381.
html

Nebraska Psychology Professor Uses IPod for Lectures

Washington Post

Associated Press

LINCOLN, Neb. -- Psychology students and fans of Apple's popular iPod can now listen and learn at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Calvin Garbin is one of the first instructors at the university to harness iPod's versatility and use it as an educational tool.

Garbin uses a wireless microphone hooked to his shirt to record the 50-minute lecture, then downloads the recording onto his computer. He cuts the lecture into short audio chunks and puts it on his Web site for downloading.

Students confused about certain parts of the lecture can click on a link and listen again. And podcasting makes studying for tests easier for those students who are auditory learners, Garbin said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020601295.
html?referrer=email

Habits of Highly Effective Justice Workers

Christianity Today

by Rodolpho Carrasco

Not so long ago, evangelical Christians who served the poor often found themselves on the defensive among fellow believers. Now it's the rare church that doesn't engage in works of mercy and justice. Watching this evangelical wave of concern and action, I've been greatly encouraged. Yet as I listen to my fellow justice-impassioned Christ-followers, whether they are newbies or grizzled veterans, I often hear only part of the message of justice.

There is no shortage of protest across the political spectrum. But while I celebrate this development, I worry that we are perilously weak at walking alongside the poor, at investing directly into the lives of individuals to give them what they truly need—not what we believe they need or what our policy statements tell us they need. I've found that it's relatively easy to raise a voice in protest, but unfathomably hard to invest in a life.

Take money skills. While some urban youth have a good grasp of personal finance, many don't. How to manage a credit card, why to avoid check-cashing shops, why a good credit report is a critical tool in America—most youth on my street know almost nothing about these topics.

Those who lack knowledge and experience managing money must be taught. But money management must be practiced in order to be truly learned. Is this young man getting the training he needs? More often than not, the answer is no, especially among fatherless young men. The older he is, the more bad habits he is likely to have accrued over the years. While he painstakingly unlearns those habits, he still has to make ends meet.

After seeing this pattern repeatedly in northwest Pasadena, I began to wonder where I learned about money. After all, at age 6 I was the at-risk poster child. I was "the poor." But my sister was a math major—and that fact alone made a difference.

But there came a day, as a young adult, when the problem was not understanding, but confidence. Deep down, I didn't believe I could really hold on to money, that this particular Mexican would ever rise above his circumstances. I went through a severe crisis of self-doubt.

I had a lot of support from family and friends, yet it took a long time to learn what I know now about finances. Now add issues like education, employment, and marriage. There is no way around these basic life skills if a person is ever to escape poverty. The investment needed is long, sacrificial, and, frankly, tedious. Doing justice by walking alongside people as they develop critical life skills is not exciting. Protesting on Wall Street against globalization is exciting. Getting arrested at the courthouse is exciting. Filling the National Mall with hundreds of thousands of people is exciting. But staying proximate to people as they learn lessons they should have learned years ago? When's the last time you saw that on cnn?

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/002/31.46.html

One reporter's futile attempt to see the Shroud of Turin

Canada.com

by Howard Fendrich, Canadian Press

TURIN, Italy (AP) - A bit of advice for English-speaking visitors to this city who want to find the Shroud of Turin: Don't try asking locals, "Where can I find the Shroud of Turin?"

The reason, of course, that Italians aren't familiar with the word "shroud" is that it's, well, English. Italians call it "La Santa Sindone."

And then, I hit upon the secret formula, using these words in English: "Jesus" and "religious." Perhaps because those are pronounced quite similarly in Italian - "Gesu" and "religioso" - she understood.

"Aaah, La Santa Sindone," a newspaper vendor said, nodding excitedly, and pulled out a map to show me the way.

Here's some more advice: Don't expect to actually see the Sindone. About 4 1/2 metres long and one metre wide, the linen has an image that believers say was left by Jesus' body when he was wrapped in it after being taken down from the cross.

When you enter the cathedral, to the left of the pews, there's a photographic replica of the Shroud, about two-thirds the size of the original. There are pamphlets in several languages, and helpful guides who aim their red laser pens at the copy as they describe it.

The Shroud itself? It's in its own chapel in the back left corner of the cathedral, enclosed in a box behind bulletproof glass. It was last brought out for public viewing in 2000, and is not scheduled to go on display again until 2025.

There was speculation the Shroud might be open to viewing during the Olympics. But Turin Cardinal Severino Poletto, the Shroud's custodian, announced in December it would remain closed.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/oddities/story.html?id=31ed185b-58b6-4ad6-aa44
-963e1a40a184&k=20927

Man gets wallet back after nearly 40 years

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

Associated Press

A man is being reacquainted with his past after a Utah family returned a wallet he lost at a gas station nearly 40 years ago.

Schmitt apparently lost the wallet at a gas station in Logan, Utah, in the spring of 1967, when he stopped to fill up his 1955 Austin Healy. The station's owner stashed it in a drawer, presumably hoping the person would come back.

Ted Nyman, of Logan, found it decades later while cleaning out his father-in-law's estate. He tracked Schmitt down through the Internet, and last week mailed the wallet 2,158 miles across the country.

The beige wallet still held $5 in cash, a traffic ticket, 8-cent airmail stamps and Doug Schmitt's freshman ID card from Utah State University. The wallet also had photos of Schmitt's high-school girlfriends and a dry-cleaning receipt.

As an antiques dealer, Schmitt is accustomed to digging through other people's attics for wartime letters and other personal histories. He never expected someone else to pore over his past.

"It's just so wonderful that people will take the time to research that, then return something to someone they don't even know," said his wife, Vickie Schmitt.

Holy Hip-Hop, Batman!

San Francisco Chronicle

by Jason B. Johnson, Chronicle Staff Writer

DJ Born Again has the crowd rocking at Changed Life Church in Pittsburg on a recent Friday night, where young worshipers wear casual outfits and baggy pants in place of dress suits and skirts.

Changed Life is one of about six churches in the Bay Area -- and about 2,000 nationwide -- that lace their youth ministries with holy hip-hop to attract new, young believers.

"Youngsters have to have something done in a way they can understand," said DJ Born Again, whose real name is Ramon Jackson. "I deliver the message, but I still keep it raw."

The gospel rap movement, which features Christianity instead of profanity, dates to the early 1990s in cities like New York and Washington, D.C., but it has begun to catch on in the Bay Area only recently.

Gospel rap has drawn in young people who didn't come to church before, and some of them have also brought their parents into the church, Tindsley said.

"My dad was surprised when I started coming," said Emily Thornton, 14, of Antioch, who began attending Changed Life's hip-hop services last month with her older brother. "I think he was thinking 'why would you want to come to church when you could be at home doing something else?' "

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/31/HOLYRAP.TMP&nl=top

States Consider Bans On Protests at Funerals

Washington Post

By Kari Lydersen

At least five Midwestern states are considering legislation to ban protests at funerals in response to demonstrations by the Rev. Fred Phelps and members of his Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church, who have been protesting at funerals of Iraq war casualties because they say the deaths are God's punishment for U.S. tolerance toward gays.

Though the soldiers were not gay, the protesters say the deaths, as well as Hurricane Katrina, recent mining disasters and other tragedies are God's signs of displeasure. They also protested at the memorial service for the 12 West Virginia miners who died in the Sago Mine.

Indiana State Sen. Anita Bowser said she thinks the demonstrators are hoping to provoke a physical attack so they can file a lawsuit. "These people are not gainfully employed, so they're waiting for someone to do battle with them so they can go to court and win. They want a big liability case to pursue. I don't think they actually give a diddly wink about the arguments they're making, but they're clever individuals trying to make a fast buck."

Shirley Phelps-Roper, Phelps's daughter and an attorney for the church, said if legislation passes, the group will challenge it in court. "Whatever they do would be unconstitutional," she said. "These aren't private funerals; these are patriotic pep rallies. Our goal is to call America an abomination, to help the nation connect the dots. You turn this nation over to the fags and our soldiers come home in body bags."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/29/AR2006012900927.
html

Warning on cars damaged in hurricanes

San Francisco Chronicle

by Steve Rubenstein, Chronicle Staff Writer

600,000 cars damaged in last year's hurricanes are now making their way onto the market.

State Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi visited a San Francisco salvage yard Thursday to warn against the dangers of buying used cars damaged by the Hurricane Katrina floodwaters.

Many of the cars damaged by the Gulf Coast hurricanes last year that are turning up these days on the used-car market have been dolled up, detailed and decked out in order to fleece the car-buying public.

Flood-damaged cars can look OK, Garamendi said, but their electrical systems and safety devices can be ruined. Some hustlers move damaged cars from state to state until their title records have been "cleansed" of their salvage status, the commissioner said.

Garamendi advised people to check the vehicle identification number of any potential car purchase on www.nicb.org, the database maintained by the National Insurance Crime Bureau that tracks hurricane-damaged cars.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/27/CARS.TMP&nl=top

Doggie Howser MD

San Jose Mercury News

By Linda Goldston, Mercury News

Researchers in Marin County have been able to train dogs to detect lung and breast cancer in breath samples from people with 88 to 99 percent accuracy, according to a study released last week.

The studies show that cancer cells emit chemicals or molecules that are different from those in normal cells, and more research is needed to determine just what those chemicals are -- and whether they could help doctors find cancers earlier.

Questions to be answered are: "What is it dogs are smelling, and can chemical analysis match the dogs in terms of specificity and sensitivity?" said Michael McCulloch, research director for the private, non-profit Pine Street Foundation in San Anselmo. "Then the pathway will likely lead to an `electronic nose.' "

The study, which will be published in the March issue of the medical journal Integrative Cancer Therapies, is the first to test whether dogs can detect cancer by sniffing samples of exhaled breath collected in tubes.

http://www.mercurynews.com:80/mld/mercurynews/news/13715788.htm

Pine Street Foundation:
http://www.pinestreetfoundation.org/

Cancer-detection studies with dogs at Florida State University:
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~fsusri/

When is my credit card bill due?

Washington Post

by Don Oldenburg, Consumer Columnist

After the wildly popular column about a Verizon double-billing glitch, among the dozens of phone-bill-focused folks who wrote in was Elliot Greene of Silver Spring, who offered this alert to readers when paying their phone bills: "Several times Verizon has charged me a late fee when the due date for my bill fell on a Sunday and my payment was received on Monday," he says.

Basic business standard is to accept as "on time" payments received the next business day following a weekend due date. Of course, lots of screwy things have been occurring with late fees and not just in the telephone industry (watch your credit cards!).

Greene says when he called to complain, Verizon "promptly agreed to refund the charge." But he doesn't like the implication that Verizon waits for the customer to correct the problem "and Verizon gets to pocket the fees if the customer doesn't do so." Moral: Pay bills on time -- and check 'em even when you do.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/21/AR2006012100159_
2.html

Swelling Textbook Costs

Washington Post

By Susan Kinzie, Washington Post Staff Writer

Textbook prices have been rising at double the rate of inflation for the past two decades, according to a Government Accountability Office study.

Students at four-year schools spent, on average, about $900 for books and supplies in 2003-04, more than a quarter of the cost of tuition and fees. At community colleges, the GAO study found, the books amounted to almost three-quarters of the cost.

Because many undergraduates get federal financial aid, the overall cost of college is a concern to Congress, which sought the study.

Textbook prices almost tripled from 1986 to 2004, the GAO report found. And publishers revise texts more quickly than they used to, limiting the used-book market.

Students have plenty of conspiracy theories for the rising prices: Greedy publishers who change the cover just to charge more. Self-absorbed professors who assign their own masterpieces or forget to list the books till it's too late to find a used copy. Overpriced stores.

"Where college stores come into play, a lot of students automatically perceive a rip-off," Libertowski said. But stores' profit margin is far lower for textbooks, she said, than for all those sweatshirts and mugs, and it has been steady for years.

A few schools have even tried renting out books for the semester. Bills in Congress would provide grants to some schools to launch rental plans and make as much as $1,000 of textbook costs tax deductible.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/22/AR2006012201290.
html

Guinness ice cream

Boston Globe

A recipe for Guinness ice cream ...

But it has gluten in it ... doesn't it ???

http://www.boston.com/ae/food/articles/2006/01/18/guinness_ice_cream/

Right to a Christian Scotland

The Scotsman - Opinion

By Helen Martin

What's wrong with Scotland being a Christian country and why shouldn't we say it is?

India is a Hindu country. Pakistan is a Muslim country. Italy is a Catholic country. There! Lock me up for being politically incorrect and throw away the key.

BMI is the only British airline to fly to Saudi Arabia. When BMI's female cabin crew disembark and spend stopover time in Saudi, they have been told to wear long robes and headscarves. The company says it is an obligation to respect the customs of the host country.

We put no such obligation on visitors from Saudi or anywhere else. Perhaps we should. Perhaps it is the fact that we don't impose our customs which leads them to believe we have no customs worth saving.

Or perhaps, as Cardinal Keith O'Brien suggests, we should begin by simply reminding ourselves and others that this is a Christian country with perfectly valid and respectable Christian values which are every bit as treasured as those of other cultures and faiths.

http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=72312006

First lady says abstinence is a choice

Washington Times

By Bill Sammon

First lady Laura Bush yesterday said she was "irritated" by outside criticism of her husband's anti-AIDS programs in Africa as being focused too heavily on abstinence and not enough on condoms.

"I'm always a little bit irritated when I hear the criticism of abstinence, because abstinence is absolutely 100 percent effective in eradicating a sexually transmitted disease," Mrs. Bush said.

"In a country or a part of the world where one in three people have a sexually transmitted deadly disease, you have to talk about abstinence, you really have to," she said. "In many countries where girls feel obligated to comply with the wishes of men, girls need to know that abstinence is a choice."

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20060116-124016-1477r.htm

Go to jail or go to church

Cincinnati Enquirer

By Dan Horn, Enquirer staff writer

A judge gave Brett Haines a choice Friday: Go to jail or go to church.

The Anderson Township man, convicted of disorderly conduct, immediately chose six weeks of Sunday worship over 30 days in the Hamilton County Justice Center. But there's a catch.

Haines, who was accused of using racial slurs and threatening a black cab driver, must attend services at a predominantly black church. "If you want to get out of jail, you're going to have to raise your black consciousness," the judge said.

Mallory said he was concerned about maintaining a separation between church and state, so he asked Haines whether the option would offend his beliefs. Haines said he was not a church-goer, but would like to give it a try.

The cab driver said he hoped the sentence would work, but he would have preferred Haines serve his 30 days. "Church don't change everybody," he said.

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060114/NEWS01/601140399/10
77

Microsoft to stop developing media software for Macs

San Jose Mercury News, AP

by Allison Linn, Associated Press

Microsoft Corp. will stop developing a version of its Windows Media Player for Apple Computer Inc.'s Macs, and will instead offer free technology that lets people play Windows Media files using Apple's own software.

Microsoft said it would continue to offer the current version but won't make any more improvements to it. The software maker has signed a deal with Nevada City, Calif.-based Telestream Inc. to offer a free plug-in that will let people play Windows Media video and audio files using Apple's QuickTime player.

Because Microsoft's media player for Macs has not been updated for quite some time, Harader said the quality of some Windows Media files could be better if people used the plug-in and QuickTime.

http://www.mercurynews.com:80/mld/mercurynews/news/13621279.htm

The plug-in is already posted on the Microsoft web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/flip4mac.mspx

Eager Few Try to Reclaim Destroyed Parish

New York Times

by Susan Saulny

The Robinsons are living where few people even dare to drive, here in the midst of a vast stretch of desolation on the banks of the Mississippi River east of New Orleans in St. Bernard Parish. In all of southeast Louisiana, Hurricane Katrina was the most vicious and thorough in its destruction here, and some streets remain impassable nearly five months later, blocked by houses that the storm surge lifted, twisted and deposited as wrecks. One home in Chalmette had water over its roof for 15 days and was coated in crude oil from a nearby refinery spill.

Now, the Robinson family members have come back to their front yard to live in a government-issued trailer, determined to make a home again on what seems like the edge of civilization.

Except for her cellphone and weekly church services, Ms. Robinson has little connection to other people apart from her family in the trailer. It is a 45-minute drive to the Wal-Mart in Gretna, the best option for groceries. There is no mail service, shopping mall or movie theater. And there is just enough electricity to light her trailer and part of the street.

Officials estimate that 8,000 people like Ms. Robinson have begin to repopulate St. Bernard Parish, which used to have close to 70,000 residents. The repopulation is mostly an independent movement, with residents saying they have received little guidance or help from the local government as they clean, gut and rebuild on their own.

What is left of the local government is doing what it can; most streets have been cleared of debris and fallen wires, and the major intersections have working traffic signals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/national/nationalspecial/17bernard.html

Two Million Displaced By Storms

Washington Post

The Federal Emergency Management Agency yesterday increased its count of people displaced from the Gulf Coast by hurricanes Katrina and Rita by nearly a third, to about 2 million people. A FEMA spokeswoman attributed the sharp rise to a reporting error.

Shortly before Christmas, FEMA discovered that it had not counted families receiving rental assistance under a traditional disaster aid program.

According to a news release, FEMA is paying rental assistance to 685,635 families whose homes were damaged or destroyed by the Aug. 29 and Sept. 24 storms, an increase of 167,000, or 32 percent, over a month ago. FEMA officials generally estimate three people per household as a rule of thumb.

The estimate of 2 million displaced dwarfs the number of people forced from their homes by past U.S. natural disasters, such as hurricanes Andrew, Charley, Ivan or Hugo, as well as the Dust Bowl migration.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/12/AR2006011201912.
html

300 million, plus or minus

New York Times

If the experts are right, some time this month, a couple will conceive a baby who, when born in October, will become the 300 millionth American.

As of yesterday, the Census Bureau officially pegged the resident population of the United States at closing in on 297,900,000. The bureau estimates that with a baby being born every 8 seconds, someone dying every 12 seconds and the nation gaining an immigrant every 31 seconds on average, the population is growing by one person every 14 seconds.

At that rate, the total is expected to top 300 million late this year. But with those projections adjusted monthly and the number of births typically peaking during the summer, the benchmark is likely to be reached about nine months from now.

Demographers know that the United States, which ranks third in population behind China and India, is still gaining people while many other industrialized nations are not. The United States' population is growing by just under 1 percent annually, the equivalent of the entire population of Chicago (2.8 million).

Given the demographic changes recorded in the 20th century, the 300 millionth American, born in the same year the first baby boomers turn 60, will be a very different person from the paradigm in 1915, when the nation's estimated population passed 100 million, or even in 1967, when it topped 200 million.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/13/national/13baby.html?th&emc=th

Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For

San Jose Mercury News

Nine Bay Area companies made the cut. These six spotlighted:

1. Genentech
25. Cisco Systems
27. Network Appliance
43. Intuit
73. Yahoo
97. Intel

Google was not eligible because it has not been around long enough.

On the list in the past but not this year: Xilinx, Adobe, HP.

http://www.mercurynews.com:80/mld/mercurynews/news/13590509.htm

A Tail Of Revenge

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

FORT SUMNER, N.M. -- A mouse got back at a homeowner who tried to dispose of it in a pile of burning leaves. The blazing creature ran back to the man's house and set it on fire.

Luciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner said he caught the mouse inside his house and wanted to get rid of it.

"I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house," Mares said from a motel room Saturday.

Village Fire Chief Juan Chavez said the burning mouse ran to just beneath a window, and the flames spread up from there and throughout the house.

No was hurt inside, but the home and everything in it was destroyed.

State of the Pews

Newsweek Commentary

by Rabbi Marc Gellman

The Barna Group (barna.org), a consulting and religious research firm in Ventura, Calif., discovered these trends in their research into particularly Christian religious life in America in the past year:

1. Pathetic prayer. Churches are more concerned with programming than with prayer. Most church attendees say that they do not experience the presence of God in the service and fewer than one out of 10 spent any time worshipping God outside of their church service.

2. The continuing demise of the black church. Using the measures of church attendance, Bible knowledge, the priority of faith in a person's life, and the reliance on the religious community for support and relationships, Barna concludes that things are not looking good for black churches. Barna surprisingly concludes that the main reason for this decline is the increasing wealth of the black community.

3. The energizing of the evangelicals. Although only 7 percent of adults are evangelicals, their voice is the loudest and their energy, charity, Bible study, and prayer life is the greatest. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it was the evangelical volunteers who came in the greatest numbers and stayed for the longest time.

4. Biblical illiteracy. The Barna Group has discovered that most Christians (and I would add most Jews) are in increasing numbers biblically illiterate. Churches have demoted and de-emphasized Bible study. The Sunday-TV preachers I regularly monitor for good jokes use biblical verses as mere decorations for their psycho-babble sermons, not the driving reason for their sermons. Most of the baby rabbis I mentor still preach sermons (if they preach at all) that sound more like Dr. Phil than Rabbi Phil.

5. Revolutionaries. Barna labels as “Christian revolutionaries” the more than 20 million people who are pursuing their Christian faith outside the box. They meet in homes or at work. These revolutionaries, as Barna labels them, are really passionate Christians who have no patience for the moribund bureaucracy of organized church life.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10696190/site/newsweek/

After the tsunami

Daily Telegraph

By Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor

Asked once how she could possibly help all the poor of the world, Mother Teresa answered simply: "One by one." Since arriving in Sri Lanka, it has been clear to me that the tsunami devastated people one by one, and only one by one can they rebuild their lives. But in that lies the glory, too, of the post-tsunami human drama.

The pace of reconstruction seems at first sight painfully slow. Most survivors remain in temporary homes: some 90,000 houses in Sri Lanka are needed, but only 10 per cent have been built. Visit the devastated villages to hear people's stories, and it becomes clear why. Reconstruction is not, primarily, a question of bricks and mortar but of communities making choices; and sometimes those choices are not easy.

Some people have expected too much, too soon: it is normal, after a major disaster, for the rebuilding to become most intense in the second or third year, not the first. The amount of building required in Sri Lanka is six times what it would be normally, and there is an obvious skills shortage. There is, above all, the challenge of land ownership, which has become a complex issue in the tsunami-affected areas.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/01/01/do0101.xml
&sSheet=/opinion/2006/01/01/ixop.html

After Storm, Relief Groups Consider More Work in U.S.

New York Times

By Stephanie Strom

The chaotic response to Hurricane Katrina by government agencies and the Red Cross, the sole private organization charged by law with providing relief in national emergencies, has led organizations like Oxfam to wonder whether they have a role in disaster response here.

Now, as Congress considers whether it should broaden the mandate for disaster response beyond the Red Cross, Oxfam and other international humanitarian agencies may find themselves called upon to take on new responsibilities in the United States.

Nonprofit groups responding to a crisis abroad try to work collaboratively and with grass-roots nonprofit organizations that they have nurtured as part of their efforts to build civil society and eradicate poverty.

Oxfam's foray into domestic disaster relief began with the local groups, like the Southern Mutual Help Association Inc., that it had been working with for several years to tackle poverty and promote economic development and with new groups its workers on the ground identified.

"I had never heard of them before," said Sarah Walker, executive director of Visions of Hope, a tiny nonprofit that provides a variety of housing support to low-income residents of Biloxi, Miss. "But they were here right away and wanting to know if we'd be willing to work with them and naturally, we said yes."

Oxfam made a $30,000 grant to Visions, which used the money to buy vouchers that families could use at the Home Depot, Lowe's and other retailers for brooms, mops, flashlights and other equipment to clear out their homes. For Visions, with an annual budget of about $125,000, the grant made a huge difference.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/national/nationalspecial/01oxfam.html

Indiana lawmakers pray illegally

Indianapolis Star, Washington Post

A judge's ruling barred the Indiana House of Representatives from invoking the name of Jesus or any other specific deity in official prayers.

That didn't prevent the lawmakers for holding their own prayer, nor did it keep about 30 people from gathering in the Statehouse rotunda this morning to pray.

In fact, the ruling motivated them. Sitting in blue chairs in the marble rotunda, people began the prayer session at 10 a.m. by chanting "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus."

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060104/NEWS01/601040484

House Speaker Brian C. Bosma on Tuesday left open the possibility that today's opening-day invocation for the 2006 General Assembly might not comply with recent court orders barring references specific to Christianity.

In a Nov. 30 decision, U.S. District Judge David Hamilton found that the House violated the U.S. Constitution's clause prohibiting a government-established religion when at least 29 invocations last year were offered in the name of Jesus, the Savior or the Son.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060104/NEWS02/601040435

The Indiana General Assembly will begin its 2006 session this week. Speaking from a federal bench, Judge David Hamilton ruled recently on a lawsuit brought by the Indiana Civil Liberties Union that any prayers offered at the Indiana House of Representatives must be nonsectarian and respectful of the diversity of religion of our state. Prayers should not seek to proselytize nor exclude members of other faiths. House Speaker Brian Bosma is challenging that ruling, suggesting that restricting clergy from praying in the name of Jesus Christ is an intrusion on their constitutional rights of freedom of speech and religion.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060103/OPINION/601030355/10
02

A federal court judge on Wednesday denied a request to amend his ruling banning sectarian prayer in the Indiana House of Representatives, clearing the way for an appeal to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

U.S. District Judge David Hamilton rejected arguments by House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, that Hamilton's ruling was too vague to enforce.

"If the speaker or those offering prayers seek to evade the injunction through indirect but well understood expressions of specifically Christian beliefs, the audience, the public, and the court will be able to see what is happening. In that unlikely event, the court will be able to take appropriate measures to enforce" the injunction.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051229/NEWS02/512290459/100
6/NEWS01

In a spirited duel over prayer, members of the Indiana state House are at odds with a federal judge who ruled that the daily invocation appeals too often to Jesus Christ and a Christian god.

The "systematically sectarian" prayers, U.S. District Judge David F. Hamilton concluded, are barred by the Constitution, which forbids the government to show preference for any religious denomination. He ordered the House to avoid mentioning Christ in the formal benedictions.

A number of politicians have vowed to defy Hamilton, whom they accuse of undermining a 188-year Indiana tradition and interfering in legislative branch affairs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/31/AR2005123100723.
html

You don't get arrested unless you break the law

Christianity Today

by Sheryl Henderson Blunt

Evangelist Luis Palau says he did not mean to "create problems" for Chinese house church members when he urged them to officially register their churches in order to "receive greater freedom and blessings from the government."

"Rev. Palau is either unaware of the problems that registration can cause, or perhaps he is aware that if he makes remarks too critical of China's government, it could severely restrict his ministry there," said Paul Marshall, senior fellow at Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom. "Registration can require revealing all the church's members to the government and exposing all of the church's activities. If the government then wants to crack down, it has all the information it needs."

At a November press conference in Beijing, Palau said, "You don't get arrested unless you break the law." Palau has since said he regrets making the remarks. More recently he conceded, "It's not my role as an evangelist to suggest that churches in China should register."

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/002/4.22.html

Big Government Fix-It Plan for New Orleans

New York Times

By Adam Nossiter

Representative Richard H. Baker is the champion of a housing recovery plan that would make the federal government the biggest landowner in New Orleans. Mr. Baker's proposed Louisiana Recovery Corporation would spend as much as $80 billion to pay off lenders, restore public works, buy huge ruined chunks of the city, clean them up and then sell them back to developers.

Property owners would not have to sell, but those who did would have an option to buy property back from the corporation. The federal corporation would have nothing to do with the redevelopment of the land; those plans would be drawn up by local authorities and developers.

A sobering early flyover of the ruined neighborhoods in New Orleans convinced him that ordinary solutions would not work. Here was a problem way beyond the capacity of private enterprise.

Desperate for a big-scale fix to the region's huge real estate problem, Louisiana officials and business leaders of all stripes have embraced the plan, calling its passage crucial.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/05/national/nationalspecial/05buyout.html

Bitter Cold, Snow Blocking Relief Supplies in Kashmir

Washington Post

By Zarar Khan, Associated Press

Shivering with cold and beating the snow off their fragile tents with sticks, earthquake survivors struggled Monday to keep their children warm as the bitter winter hit Kashmir, grounding helicopter aid flights and blocking roads for the second straight day.

Dozens of tents, including ones housing a school and a mosque, collapsed under the weight of 10 inches of snow that blanketed the village of Mira Tanolian, about four miles south of Muzaffarabad. The settlement lies amid the ruins of houses destroyed by the Oct. 8 temblor that killed at least 73,000 people and left 3.5 million homeless.

The Pakistan meteorological office forecast continued rain and snow for the next two days and low temperatures of 21 degrees Fahrenheit in the plains and 7 degrees Fahrenheit above 5,000 feet. According to the meteorological office, Kashmir and northwestern Pakistan have had at least two feet of snow since Saturday evening.

For the second straight day, helicopters from the United Nations, foreign militaries and Pakistan's army were not able to deliver winterized tents, clothes, food and other provisions in the quake zone because of poor visibility, said Maj. Farooq Nasir, an army spokesman. They were trying to move supplies by truck, but mudslides and snow have also made some roads impassable, he said.

"It's what we have been fearing all along," Larry Hollingworth, the U.N. deputy humanitarian coordinator said by phone from Battagram. "The winter is now with us."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/02/AR2006010201773.
html

Help comes on little cat feet

Associated Press

Associated Press

Police say that a cat dialed 911 to help his fallen owner.

Police aren't sure how else to explain it. But when an officer walked into an apartment Thursday night to answer a 911 call, an orange-and-tan striped cat was lying by a telephone on the living room floor. The cat's owner, Gary Rosheisen, was on the ground near his bed having fallen out of his wheelchair.

Rosheisen said his cat, Tommy, must have hit the right buttons to call 911.

Rosheisen said he couldn't get up because of pain from osteoporosis and ministrokes that disrupt his balance. He also wasn't wearing his medical-alert necklace and couldn't reach a cord above his pillow that alerts paramedics that he needs help.

Daugherty said police received a 911 call from Rosheisen's apartment, but there was no one on the phone. Police called back to make sure everything was OK, and when no one answered, they decided to check things out. That's when Daugherty found Tommy next to the phone.

Rosheisen got the cat three years ago to help lower his blood pressure. He tried to train him to call 911, unsure if the training ever stuck.

The phone in the living room is always on the floor, and there are 12 small buttons -- including a speed dial for 911 right above the button for the speaker phone.

"He's my hero," Rosheisen said.

2006 to be delayed a wee bit

CNN News

Get ready for a minute with 61 seconds. Scientists are delaying the start of 2006 by the first "leap second" since 1998.

The adjustment will be carried out by sticking an extra second into atomic clocks worldwide at the stroke of midnight Coordinated Universal Time, the widely adopted international standard, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology said this week.

"Enjoy New Year's Eve a second longer," the institute said in an explanatory notice. "You can toot your horn an extra second this year."

On the U.S. East Coast, the extra second occurs just before 7 p.m. on New Year's Eve. Atomic clocks at that moment will read 23:59:60 before rolling over to all zeros.

Deciding when to introduce a leap second is the responsibility of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, a standards-setting body. Under an international pact, the preference for leap seconds is December 31 or June 30. The first leap second was added on June 30, 1972.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/12/25/leap.second.reut/

The Lord's Resistance Army

Christianity Today

by J. Carter Johnson in Kitgum, Uganda

Why the children of Uganda are killing one another in the name of the Lord.

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is one of the larger terrorist organizations in the world. It has killed more people than many other violent groups, yet few Westerners have ever heard of it, since nearly all its violence is perpetrated in the border region between Uganda and Sudan in East Africa.

On a continent plagued with endless guerilla warfare, where war crimes are standard fighting fare, the LRA stands apart as an especially odious group. LRA crimes against humanity are so repulsive that its only former ally, the Islamic government of Sudan, jettisoned its relationship with the LRA to improve Sudan's international relations.

What began in 1986 as a rebellion against the Ugandan government has metamorphosed into a military millenarian cult. Its reason for existence is to perpetuate the power of its leader, a ruthless witchcraft practitioner named Joseph Kony, who envisions an Acholiland ruled by a warped interpretation of the Ten Commandments. He uses passages from the Pentateuch to justify mutilation and murder. He promotes a demonic spirituality crafted from an eclectic mix of Christianity, Islam, and African witchcraft.

Any resemblance to these religions is superficial: While the army observes rituals such as praying the rosary and bowing toward Mecca, there is no prescribed theology in the conventional sense. Kony's beliefs are a haphazard mix from the Bible and the Qur'an, tailored around his wishful thinking, personal desires, and practical needs of the moment. Jesus is the Son of God. But instead of saving the world from sin through his sacrificial love on the Cross, he is a source of power employed for killing those who oppose Kony. The Holy Spirit is not the Divine Comforter, but one who directs Kony's tactical military decisions.

Despite dabbling in the Bible and the Qur'an, Kony's real spiritual obsession is witchcraft. He burns toy military vehicles and figurines to predict the course of battles from their burn patterns. He uses reptiles in magic rituals to sicken those who anger him or to detect traitors in his midst. He claims to receive military direction from spirits of dead men from different countries, including Americans.

The rest of the article contains graphic descriptions of brutality, mostly descriptions of children required to kill other children, or be killed themselves.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/001/18.30.html

How to Help

Here are key Christian and charitable organizations that work with the victims of the lra conflict in northern Uganda.

Far Reaching Ministries
www.farreachingministries.org
951-677-4474

World Vision
www.worldvision.org
www.seekjustice.org
888-511-6548

Save the Children
www.savethechildren.org
800-SAVETHECHILDREN

Oxfam
www.oxfam.org.uk
www.oxfamamerica.org
800-77-OXFAM

Jesuit Refugee Service
www.jesref.org
202-462-0400

Write your congressman: www.house.gov/writerep

Here is another article about what American Christians can do to help resolve the LRA conflict.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/001/20.36.html

News of subtle significance

New York Times Op-Ed

by William Falk

Developments that may have slipped your notice in 2005:

Scientists took ice cores from ancient glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. Bubbles of air trapped in the ice provided a sampling of the atmosphere going back 650,000 years. A study, published last month in the journal Science, found that the level of carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases that can warm the planet, is now 27 percent higher than at any previous time. The level is even far higher now than it was in periods when the climate was much warmer and North America was largely tropical. Climatologists said the ice cores left no doubt that the atmosphere is being altered in a substantial and unprecedented way.

The rapid melting of the Arctic and Greenland ice caps, a new study finds, is causing freshwater to flood into the North Atlantic. That infusion of icy water appears to be deflecting the northward flow of the warming Gulf Stream, which moderates winter temperatures for Europe and the northeastern United States. The flow of the Gulf Stream has been reduced by 30 percent since 1957, the National Oceanography Center in Britain found.

This year, scientists developed a vaccine against human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease that is the primary cause of cervical cancer. The vaccine produced 100 percent immunity in the 6,000 women who received it as part of a multinational trial. As soon as the vaccine is licensed, some health officials say, it should be administered to all girls at age 12. But the Family Research Council and other social conservative groups vowed to fight that plan, even though it could virtually eliminate cervical cancer. Vaccinating girls against a sexually transmitted disease, they say, would reduce their incentive to abstain from premarital sex.

American Web giants Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have all grabbed a piece of the lucrative Chinese market - but only after agreeing to help the government censor speech on the Web.

Statements by new C.I.A. Director Porter Goss seem to confirm the widespread suspicion that Osama bin Laden is hiding in the mountains of northern Pakistan but that President Pervez Musharraf, fearing the reaction of Islamic militants, is not eager for him to be captured within Pakistan.

A new study found that dormant infections can be activated when certain parts of the body, particularly the feet and the nose, get wet and cold. This confirms mom's notion that getting a chill can lead to a cold.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/30/opinion/30falk.html?th&emc=th

Angry Chihuahuas attack officer in Fremont

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

A pack of angry Chihuahuas attacked a police officer who was escorting a teenager home following a traffic stop, authorities said.

The officer suffered minor injuries including bites to his ankle on Thursday when the five Chihuahuas escaped the 17-year-old boy's home and rushed the officer in the doorway.

The officer was treated at a local hospital and returned to work less than two hours later, Veteran said.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/12/30/state/n085627S3
8.DTL&type=bondage

Katrina Victims Salvage Holiday Spirit

Yahoo News, AP

By Mary Foster, Associated Press Writer

NEW ORLEANS - The congregation of First Emmanuel Baptist Church drove from Baton Rouge, Houston and other points far and wide on Christmas, then walked past collapsed buildings and piles of storm wreckage to worship in their old church for the first time since Hurricane Katrina.

Cheryl Anderson was only too happy to get up at 2 a.m. Christmas morning to begin cooking in the tiny kitchen of the trailer she shares with her husband, son and three grandchildren. Even the location, on the grounds of Metairie Cemetery, where her husband works, didn't bother her.

Anderson, 46, floated away from her house on a door when the water hit 9 feet. She spent two days on an overpass, then took shelter at the Superdome before being evacuated to Birmingham, Ala. Her family was scattered across four states and it took her months to find them.

"I didn't think I'd live to see this Christmas," Anderson said. "Now we're having everything like a regular Christmas — the gumbo, the ham, all of it. Everything except a tree. That won't fit in the trailer."

"You get 14 feet of water in your house and it don't leave much," said Harold Hansford, who had managed to salvage a few Christmas decorations from the attic. This year his house is decorated with the marks painted on by rescue workers as they made their way through the neighborhood looking for people and bodies.

"I never imagined Christmas like this," he said. "Not much left, but we'll be back."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051226/ap_on_re_us/katrina_christmas

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

New York Times Op-Ed

In this op-ed in the New York Times, Timothy D. Wilson, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, argues against our "annual ritual of introspection." His studies show that "too much analysis can confuse people about how they really feel." He shows that people who analyzed their relationships by "gut feeling" predicted the relationship's success better than those who listed specific factors within the relationship. Another study shows that "that when people are depressed, ruminating on their problems makes things worse." A third study showed that "participants who were given an opportunity to do a favor for another person ended up viewing themselves as kind, considerate people," but those who were asked to reflect on the favor did not view themselves as being so kind.

Dr. Wilson has this to say about the kind of debriefing procedure we underwent when we returned from Mississippi:

For years it was believed that emergency workers should undergo a debriefing process to focus on and relive their experiences; the idea was that this would make them feel better and prevent mental health problems down the road. After 9/11, for example, well-meaning counselors flocked to New York to help police officers, firefighters and rescue workers deal with the trauma of what they had seen.

But did it do any good? In an extensive review of the research, a team led by Richard McNally, a clinical psychologist at Harvard, concluded that debriefing procedures have little benefit and might even hurt by interrupting the normal healing process. People often distract themselves from thinking about painful events right after they occur, and this may be better than mentally reliving the events.

Americans concerned about commercialization of Christmas

Yahoo News

More Americans are concerned about the commercialization of Christmas than about restrictions on public displays of religious symbols, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Fifty-two percent of respondents said they were troubled by the commercialization of the holiday, while just 35 percent expressed concern about opposition to public religious displays.

In fact, 56 percent of respondents said they were not concerned at all about the controversies surrounding the displays, according to the poll.

If given the choice, a majority of those surveyed said they would prefer being greeted with "Merry Christmas" rather than "Season's Greetings" when they entered stores over the holidays. However, 45 percent said the greetings were of little consequence to them.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051222/ap_on_re/religion_briefs \

Condom-covered Madonna embarrasses Catholic weekly

Yahoo News

"Another issue may be Catholic priests' unfamiliarity with what condoms look like."

LOL!

'Santa Pope' woos Vatican crowds

BBC News

At a chilly St Peter's Square, the Pope draped a red cloak over his shoulders and covered his head with a red velvet hat lined with white fur.

Vatican officials said the hat, known as a camauro, has been part of the papal wardrobe since the 12th century. But it has not been worn in public since the death of John XXIII in 1963.

Although missing Father Christmas' trademark white furry bobble, the pope's timely discovery of the long-forgotten camauro seemed as much a nod to the season as to the chilly weather.

http:news.bbc.co.uk2hieurope4551348.stm

Western states suffer flu first

San Jose Mercury News

By Barbara Feder Ostrov, Mercury News

California today is expected to join Utah as the two U.S. states with "widespread" influenza cases reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, state health officials said Tuesday.

Flu season typically hits the Eastern part of the country first before heading westward in January and February. This year, that pattern appears to be reversed, and while "it is indeed unusual, we don't know why," said California Department of Health Services spokeswoman Tacey Derenzy. "That's why we say the flu is unpredictable."

http://www.mercurynews.com:80/mld/mercurynews/news/13499280.htm

Rare birds mystify scientists

San Jose Mercury News

By Lisa M. Krieger, Mercury News

Pacific storms have blown thousands of rare sea birds into the Bay Area, many of them weak, emaciated and seeking refuge in rain puddles of suburban yards and parking lots. The small birds, called red phalaropes, ordinarily live many miles off the Pacific coast and are rarely seen on land.

Since the afternoon of Christmas Day, they've been sighted in Los Gatos, Palo Alto, San Francisco, even Campbell's percolation ponds at Budd Road and San Tomas Expressway. Most abundant on the coast, a flock of 1,200 was reported near Half Moon Bay.

Normally they are wary of humans. And they only come on land in the Arctic, where they briefly breed and raise their young. But many of these are weary, allowing people to approach closely. Some have been killed by cats and gulls. Along Highway 1, hundreds were reportedly struck by cars.

"They were emaciated, with anemia and low protein levels," suggesting long-term starvation, said Marie Travers of the Peninsula Humane Society. But the Bay Area's rich estuaries could offer badly needed food and rest.

http://www.mercurynews.com:80/mld/mercurynews/news/13499321.htm

Retiming traffic lights helps eight South Bay commutes

San Jose Mercury News

By Gary Richards, Mercury News Staff Columnist

Santa Clara County road engineers recently completed the first major retiming of traffic signals on local expressways and adjacent streets in 11 years, 139 lights from Capitol Expressway in East San Jose to Oregon Expressway in Palo Alto.

Since Roadshow was born 14 years ago, badly timed traffic lights have been the No. 1 complaint. In a county survey three years ago, more than seven of 10 people said that improving traffic light synchronization was the most pressing need on the eight expressways.

A nasty spot will remain at Montague Expressway and First Street -- that signal is not tied into the new synchronization plan because timing has to be linked to VTA's nearby light-rail stop. Another crunch point is on San Tomas at Highway 17, where needs on state, county and city roads can conflict.

As a separate project, San Jose retimed 409 signals on city streets during the past two years and engineers were hoping for up to a 20 percent reduction in travel time and the number of red lights drivers regularly hit. They got much more than they expected -- as much as a 45 percent decline, according to a city follow-up report.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/columnists/mr_roadshow/13493680.
htm

South Dakota Makes Abortion Rare Through Laws And Stigma

Washington Post

The Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls has one clinic day, the one day a week when the only facility in South Dakota that provides abortions could take in patients. The day changes depending on the schedules of four doctors from Minnesota who fly here on a rotating basis to perform abortions, something no doctor in South Dakota will do. The last doctor in South Dakota to perform abortions stopped about eight years ago; the consensus in the medical community is that offering the procedure is not worth the stigma of being branded a baby killer.

South Dakota, those on both sides of the abortion debate agree, has become one of the hardest states in the country in which to obtain an abortion. One of three states in the country to have only one abortion provider -- North Dakota and Mississippi are the others -- South Dakota, largely because of a strong antiabortion lobby, is also becoming a leading national laboratory for testing the limits of state laws restricting abortion, both opponents and advocates of abortion rights say.

In 2005, the South Dakota legislature passed five laws restricting abortion, after a bill to ban abortion outright had failed by one vote in 2004.

A 17-member abortion task force, made up largely of staunch abortion opponents, issued recommendations to the legislature earlier this month that included some of the most restrictive requirements for abortion in the country. The report states that science defines life as beginning at conception and recommends a law that gives fetuses the same protection that children get after birth, thus banning abortion.

State law forbids any public funding for the $450 procedure, even in the case of rape or incest. Beyond cost, there is the distance. It's a long slog here from places like Rapid City, about 350 miles away in the western part of the state. For some women, the only way to do it -- and not pay for a hotel room -- is to make the 700-mile trip in one day.

Many doctors in South Dakota say they have no personal objection to performing abortions but cannot risk their careers and community standing by offering the procedure.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/26/AR2005122600747.
html

For Some Victims of Katrina, The Bulldozer Is the Answer

Washington Post

By Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post Staff Writer

In suburban, working-class, mostly white St. Bernard Parish, where the destruction was so complete that just 10 of 25,000 houses are inhabitable, there is a headlong rush to the wrecking ball. More than 300 houses have been tagged for a mass demolition project that will begin in the coming weeks, as soon as a monumental tangle of paperwork is unraveled. Yet that's just the start in a parish where the water rose so high -- 17 feet in some parts -- that nearly every house is considered a candidate to be knocked down.

Oil refinery workers and fishermen and suburban commuters line up each day, offering their stucco and brick and wood frames to be pulverized. The homeowners' enthusiasm is bolstered by assurances that they will be allowed to rebuild, a contrast with the situation just upriver in New Orleans, where leaders of the city's rebuilding commission have discussed abandoning parts of the city that suffered the worst flooding.

Ronnie Nunez offered his house to the parish as a guinea pig for its demolition project, helping officials determine exactly how long it will take to scrape away a house and how much it will cost -- probably about $5,000 per house, reimbursable by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, parish officials say.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122301557.
html?referrer=email

Little progress in Pass Christian

Mississippi Clarion-Ledger

By Lorinda Bullock

No water, piles of debris leave residents frustrated

PASS CHRISTIAN — Progress is a word that has taken on many meanings here. To some, it's the area's first gas station reopening three months after Hurricane Katrina destroyed 80 percent of this coastal city. To others, it's getting clean water, which many of the 6,500 residents won't see for a while because the city's water system was virtually destroyed. Some residents view progress as finally getting to move into FEMA trailers, while others continue to camp out in tents.

Dan Ellis, a local historian, said he will acknowledge progress when he can leave his apartment in Eureka Springs, Ark., find the debris removed from his yard in Pass Christian and have a permit in his hand to rebuild the house he lost. "Every time I started going back, there was so little change," he said of the tons of debris that remain to be cleared.

City Alderman Donald Moore said a large number of Pass Christian residents won't or can't come back because of the lack of clean water, infrastructure and one of the most coveted items in town — a building permit. With 80 percent of the city in ruins, you can't just pass out building permits, zoning director Peggy Johnson said.

Nearly 3,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, she said. So far, 193 building permits have been processed and, of those, about 160 issued. The office has approved 300 FEMA trailer permits.

One couple is living in a trailer they received three months after Katrina destroyed their house. "I got a brand new trailer, and it leaks. The heaters don't work, and the doors don't lock."

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051221/NEWS0110/512210
354/1002

Pearlington Community Fears Losing Relief Center

WLOX-TV

By Trang Pham-Bui

Hundreds of people in Pearlington turn to the relief center at Charles Murphy Elementary for all their necessities, from washing their clothes to picking up groceries.

Paula Buhr has been in charge of the operation since mid-September.

"There's still people with no trailer, and there's people that don't have anything to put in the trailers," said Paula Buhr.

But the days may be numbered for the large relief operation. Buhr says Hancock County School Superintendent David Kopf told her she has until Thursday to move all the volunteers, supplies and donations off the school property. "He said that the people are pulling out and they don't want the liability of the volunteers here on the school property," said Buhr.

Buhr says three months after Katrina, the need in Pearlington is just too great to send the volunteers away. She says she's asking for churches and people in the community to give the volunteers another place to set up. In the meantime, she's hoping leaders in the school district will change their minds.

http://www.wlox.com/Global/story.asp?S=4180357

Habitat team to build homes for Gulf Coast victims

Poughkeepsie Journal

By Larry Fisher-Hertz

Hardly anybody lives in Pearlington, Miss., anymore. Some people from the Hudson Valley hope to change that soon.

The little Gulf Coast town (official population: 1,684) was leveled by Hurricane Katrina, its inhabitants scattered to makeshift shelters, motel rooms and mobile homes provided by emergency workers.

The rebuilding of Pearlington has begun, and local volunteers from Habitat for Humanity will soon join the effort. Starting Feb. 12, about 20 men and women, led by Rich Taylor, director of the local Habitat chapter, will spend about a week building more-suitable emergency housing for the people of Pearlington.

Habitat for Humanity, a nationwide nonprofit agency, typically builds full-sized homes for low-income families who otherwise could not afford a home of their own. The homes the volunteers will build in Mississippi will be a little smaller.

"These are basic, 450 square-foot, one-story houses," Taylor said. "They're not designed to be permanent, but the idea is to get people out of some of the places where they're living now. Some of these people are disabled, and FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) put them in mobile homes that aren't handicapped-accessible."

http://www.pojonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051220/COLUMNISTS02/5122003
18

One man's experience

Chickasaw Journal

By Pat Burgess, Chickasaw Journal

Rod Scheidel decided he would stay in Bay St. Louis in their townhouse and ride out the storm to protect their possessions if the worse happened.

"I will never forget the howling sound of the wind and of trees snapping," Scheidel said, "I hear it in my sleep." After the wind stopped, the water came. Scheidel had weathered many storms before, but the area had never flooded.

"I expected the wind, but not the water," said Scheidel, "it was coming from the back from Waveland and from the front from the beach. "I knew I was in trouble when the streets began flooding. Water was coming into the house from under the door."

Eventually the water receded. When it was safe to go outside, 90 percent of the buildings were gone. "There was a one-and-a-half to two-block strip of houses left," said Scheidel. "We were saved by the seawall, but all around was devastation, mud and debris."

There was no communication. Phone lines and cell towers were blown away. It would be a long two-week wait before help came to the area. "The neighbors and I sat on the corner of our street day after day waiting for help to come," said Scheidel.

"The first help we received was from churches. I don't know what we would have done without them. They were wonderful."

By this time, the house they previously shared was reeking with mold and mildew. There was no electricity. The Red Cross provided tents. The family slept outside in the tents for almost two months, fighting flies and mosquitoes.

They received their food from make-shift food distributors set up in parking lots. They protected their salvaged belongings while waiting for further assistance.

Then came Hurricane Rita ...

http://www.timespost.com/articles/2005/11/16/news/news8.txt

Hancock looks at shortening volunteer lifeline

South Mississippi Sun Herald

HANCOCK COUNTY - The hordes of volunteers, whose kindness has served as a lifeline for thousands of residents here since Katrina, could soon be leaving.

The county has fashioned a plan that could have some of the groups, and their free meals, gone in less than a month. The plan is designed to have all the free goods and services shut down in 90 days. The recovery plan, first made public last week during a meeting of the Board of Supervisors, outlines what free goods and services will end, and when.

"We're not trying to phase anything out, it's just about getting back to normal," said Bryan Adam, director of the county's emergency management agency.

Thousands of volunteers and faith-based groups have come to Hancock County to help, and by now, locals know where to find food, cleaning supplies and donated clothes. Some of those groups already are headed in that direction.

Christian Life Church in Orange Beach, Ala., has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars in free supplies from the Kmart parking lot in Waveland, but the group is making plans to shift its focus. "We've gutted out about 40 or 50 homes already, and we plan to eventually move from giving away supplies and food to manual labor; helping people rebuild their homes," said Jimmy Blackwell, who leads the church's relief effort.

The concern is this: With so many volunteers in the county, local businesses, hoping to reopen, will struggle trying to sell many of the same items being offered for free.

But many people are still without transportation, making it difficult to get to the grocery store in Diamondhead, the Wal-Mart Express in Waveland, or one of the few restaurants that have reopened.

"If we still have just two grocery stores open, then people will still need some things," he said. "We are going to work with the volunteers to make it a smooth transition."

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/13329927.htm

A place to call home

Lincoln Courier

by Gaye Maxson

While Joann Nicodemus spent six weeks as a volunteer relief worker at Hurricane Katrina’s ground zero in Waveland, Miss., she made a list of things she looked forward to doing again.

"Turn on a faucet.

"Take a hot shower.

"Not wear a hat.

"Sleep in a bed that’s not on the ground.

"Sit on a couch and watch TV.

"Flush a toilet."

Nicodemus worked at a distribution center in a strip mall parking lot in Waveland, Miss. The town at ground zero had been destroyed by the 35-foot storm surge.

"You can’t wrap your head around it," Nicodemus said. "(Survivors) came back to nothing. Not even any debris. That went inland for a quarter mile. Then you go inland, and those people lost everything, but their yard was filled with a stack of debris. Nothing can prepare you for it."

The strip mall was gutted and the parking lot had become a street fair of stations for food, first aid and supplies. Stations were run by various religious and governmental organizations as well as by individuals like her. The Rainbow Family – a self-professed non-organization from the hippie counterculture of the 1970s – was serving three square meals every day to anyone who came while musicians provided music to sooth the soul. Seventh-day Adventists, Mormons, Methodists, Episcopalians and others worked together helping refugees who came back day after day for food and supplies from the piles of donations.

A couple with a recreational vehicle offered Nicodemus shelter. When they left a few weeks later, she found a tarp to sleep under, and later a tent – without a fly. "I have a degree in outdoor rec, so it was pretty much up my alley," Nicodemus said. "Everybody that was down there was either in an RV or a tent. Those were pretty much your only options."

"I came back to my life. I have all my stuff. I’m going to a place where houses are intact. (The folks in Waveland) are still waiting in line for a trailer from FEMA. There are no gas stations, no stores, no houses, no jobs. And winter – winter’s coming. I wish I could be back there helping them."

http://www.lincolncourier.com/news/05/12/10/f.asp

Caretaker pursues trailer for handicapped family

South Mississippi Sun Herald

by Anita Lee

BAY ST. LOUIS - The road home after Hurricane Katrina has been chaotic for the mentally handicapped Holden family and their caretakers. The Holdens know a hurricane destroyed their house, but they do not understand why they can't go home.

Their caretaker, Barbara Foreman, has been trying for months to get the Holdens a FEMA trailer.

Because the Holdens are mentally handicapped, Foreman thought they would go to the head of the list for temporary housing. But they're still waiting.

They visited the FEMA Disaster Relief Center in Waveland a week ago. They've been there a dozen times or more. This day, they sat once again to face a FEMA worker who checked their information in the computer. He had Foreman down as a Spanish-speaking renter, rather than an English-speaking homeowner. The information will be corrected only after she brings in proof that she owned her home.

FEMA determines whether someone needs a trailer and if it can be placed on their property; the agency contracts with Bechtel to deliver and set up trailers.

This is what one of the FEMA workers told Foreman: "It's a slow process. It's coming. What can I tell you? I submitted every piece of paperwork you gave me. Once it comes to us, it goes to Bechtel, then it's out of our hands. You need to go talk to (Rep.) Gene Taylor or (Sen.) Trent Lott. Once it comes election time, you can boot them out."

Sid Melton, FEMA's mobile home operations chief in Mississippi, said Maryetta Holden's file does not indicate that she and her children are mentally handicapped.

The Holdens had flood insurance because the house is in a flood zone, but the insurance company has not agreed to pay their claim, so there's little money for repairs.

Barbara Foreman plans to persevere with the insurance claim and FEMA. But she often feels overwhelmed. "All I get is promises and stalls," Foreman said. "It's not that I haven't been trying. I've sure been trying."

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/13317834.htm

Repairs, revenue top needs in Bay St. Louis

Mississippi Clarion-Ledger

By Cathy Hayden

Although city services and most utilities have been restored to every place where a connection is viable, about 30 percent of Bay St. Louis homes and 80 percent of the businesses were wiped out.

Economic Director Buz Olsen had no estimate on lost tax revenue, but one of the biggest hits was Casino Magic, the city's only casino, which brought in $250,000 a month in taxes. The Bay St. Louis-Waveland School District is especially hurting because of the lost tax base.

The city has issued 1,800 building permits since Katrina hit on Aug. 29, so Olsen knows residents are trying to rebuild. His office is in one of four trailers the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moved in about a month ago to house city services, including the mayor's office and public works. Along with the trailers, the corps provided chairs, desks, pencils and "everything to get you back to normal," Olsen said. "They didn't say they'd pay the electric bill."

Few damaged businesses have reopened. No fast-food restaurants and only a handful of gas stations are open.

Bay St. Louis had four grocery stories before Katrina. Now the only grocery shopping is in a Wal-Mart that partially has reopened. Otherwise, everyone is driving to Gulfport or Slidell and Mandeville, both across the state line in Louisiana. "Everybody in the city is almost on equal ground. Everywhere you go, you're standing in a line for gas, groceries and food," Olsen said.

He estimates of the 8,209 counted by the U.S. Census pre-Katrina, Bay St. Louis has lost about 30 percent of its residents, or about 2,700.

Although the five-campus Bay St. Louis-Waveland school district started back Nov. 7, only about half the 2,300 students are attending. The schools were the last Coast district to reopen. Bay High has the highest attendance, 59 percent, with Waveland Elementary at 38 percent. Most students are scattered among one of 68 portable classrooms that FEMA supplied.

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051220/NEWS0110/512200
323/1002

No room for good cheer in FEMA trailers

Columbus Dispatch

by Mike Harden

WAVELAND, Miss. -- Throughout the storm-hammered Mississippi Gulf Coast, 25,371 travel trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency are occupied by hurricane survivors who will spend the holidays in confines for which the word cozy is laughably euphemistic.

FEMA trailers are about half the size of a standard mobile home. The oven space in the kitchen range is slightly smaller than a legal pad. The bathtub is the size of an old-fash- ioned washtub — about 2 feet by 3 feet.

Because the hot-water tank holds only 5 gallons, showering requires certain precautions. "You wet your body," one resident said, "then shut off the water to soap up, then turn it back on to rinse off." The next in line must wait 25 minutes for more hot water.

It is not the fear of another Katrina that drives FEMAville residents to distraction, it is the 13-pound Thanksgiving turkey that won’t fit in the oven. It is dashing outside in a chilly downpour to fetch the food they’re keeping in plastic storage bins because there is no room inside. It is the 40-mile drive to Picayune for groceries, the routine trips to the coin-operated laundry.

Last weekend at a nearby park, at a holiday party for the storm-displaced, church members distributed live Christmas trees. They had the most gracious of intentions but the worst judgment about available square footage.

http://www.dispatch.com/extra/extra.php?story=dispatch/2005/12/22/20051222-A1-02
.html

The future of Bay St. Louis could be prefabricated

South Mississippi Sun Herald

Associated Press

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. - The neighborhoods of Bay St. Louis could eventually contain hundreds of ready-made houses, said Bill Dennis, the architect who leads the area's design team. "I think these homes will play a big part in rebuilding on the Coast," Dennis said. "There's just not going to be enough builders to do all the construction that needs to be done."

The homes would be built in a factory in another part of the country and shipped to the area. It takes about four months to assemble the homes onsite.

A 1,000-square-foot house on the rubble-filled Ballentine Street is the first to appear in Bay St. Louis. It was built by Allen Associates in Santa Barbara, Calif., and delivered on trucks. The company is designing them to match the traditional feeling of Bay St. Louis homes.

Prefab homes tend to cost about 40 percent less, per square foot, than regular homes and they often are a better quality structure, Dennis said. "The construction is going to be much stronger than a stick-built house, because it has to be sturdy enough to travel on a truck," he said. "Also, the materials are usually inside during production, and not on a lot, exposed to the elements."

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/13394145.htm

Hurricane drives couple north

Ironwood, MI Daily Globe

by Diane Montz

IRONWOOD -- Bob and Irma Rondeau fled hurricane Katrina in their Honda Accord on Aug. 27, with little more than an attache holding their important papers.

Two days later, that was all that was left of their life in Bay St. Louis, Miss.

It was nearly two months before the retired couple returned to their acre of waterfront property in Bay St. Louis. A partial concrete slab and battered 400-year-old live oak tree are all that remains of their spacious home, once filled with furnishings collected in their world travels, and surrounded by gardens they created over nearly 30 years.

"We said, 'we're going to flee.' Thank goodness we did," Irma Rondeau said. Fifty-two of their neighbors and friends died in the storm.

Katrina swept ashore in a 30-foot wall of water that destroyed Bay St. Louis and adjoining Waveland, as well as other Mississippi Gulf Coast communities. Waterfront homes like the Rondeaus' took the storm's first fury.

Bob Rondeau said an aerial survey shows new artificial reef offshore underwater, believed to have been created by debris sucked out to sea by powerful undertow currents during the storm.

http://www.ironwoodglobe.com/1219flee.htm

Florida santas carry cheer to Mississippi

Orlando Sentinel

by Debbie Barr

John and Jan Williams of Apopka last week played Santa and Mrs. Claus to more than 1,200 schoolchildren and their siblings in the Hancock County school district of southern Mississippi, which was leveled by Hurricane Katrina in August.

The Williamses, who didn't have the luxury of flying reindeer, traveled about 580 miles to the town of Bay St. Louis, Miss., driving a 17-foot U-Haul and a Ford Explorer stuffed with presents.

There, the couple spent more than four hours at Bay High School distributing more than 2,000 gifts to the parents of district students and their siblings, as well as to teachers and staff. The couple also raffled off two new mountain bikes.

The Williamses, members of The Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit in Apopka, headed up a community drive through the church that provided holiday gifts to children 1 through 18.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-ortoys2205dec22,0,7414965.s
tory

Florida deputies help Waveland

Orlando Sentinel

by Maya Bell, Sentinel Staff Writer

Thanks to a $20,000 check from the Orange County Sheriff's Office, Christmas came a few days early for the Police Department of Waveland, Miss., the town all but wiped off the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina.

The donation, contributed mostly by Orange County deputies, was delivered Tuesday to Waveland police Chief James Varnell.

Waveland department personnel have plenty to be grumpy about. Katrina took their station, patrol cars, communications system, uniforms and weapons. The storm also left 25 of them without homes or personal belongings.

Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary was among the first to send help, dispatching officers to patrol the devastated community, keep order and assist in search-and-rescue efforts. He also sent eight refurbished patrol cars his office had planned to auction.

But the aid didn't stop there. Deputy sheriffs and their families also sent tactical uniforms, boots, clothing, personal-hygiene products, bedding and other essentials that Waveland officers and civilians needed to get back on their feet.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-waveland2205dec22,0,3736918
.story?coll=orl-home-headlines

Mucking offers storm relief

Ironwood, MI Daily Globe

by Diane Montz

A week spent mucking out flooded homes in Mississippi's Gulf Coast communities changed the lives of both storm victims and volunteers from Cornerstone Church.

"We've been changed," said Lois Tauer, one of eight people from the Ramsay church who traveled south in a two-vehicle caravan Nov. 4-13. "I know I've been changed. It changes you -- not that it has to, but you'd have to be awful hard-hearted not to be changed."

Otto Jensen, youth pastor at Cornerstone, said their ministry was simple. Wearing masks and double gloves, the volunteers hauled the contents of flood-ravaged homes to the curb. They emptied refrigerators untouched for 10 weeks. They removed sodden carpeting, sagging ceilings and moldy drywall.

They stripped homes down to a skeleton of 2-by-4 lumber framing enclosed by exterior siding on top of a concrete slab. In addition to the stench of mold, rotting upholstery and food, they encountered cockroaches and lizards. When the mucking crew was done, the pressure-washed, bleached interiors of the home looked like new construction, Rice said.

Gulfport's Church of the Good Shepherd provided a home for the Cornerstone volunteers, furnished with army cots and one shower for 10 people. Free lunch at a FEMA tent, where the food included Southern regional cuisine, helped the volunteers cut their out-of-pocket costs.

It was hard work that required no particular training. "We weren't a crew of highly specialized people," Jensen said. "We were housewives, a youth pastor, students."

Working in Long Beach, Pass Christian, Waveland and Gulfport, they gained skills on the job. "We can muck out a house," Tami Rice said. Jensen noted, "We're good at the destruction phase."

Because there was no power in the houses they were mucking out, work days ended around 5 p.m. when it got dark. The workers were too tired to do much more than clean up, eat, talk about their day and share devotions before turning in for the night.

http://www.ironwoodglobe.com/1213miss.htm

Migration strain

Hattiesburg American

By Rachel Leifer

The repercussions of South Mississippi's shifting population are definitely palpable, if not yet precisely quantifiable. It can be felt in the Bay-Waveland district's sparsely attended schools and in the snaking grocery store lines in Hattiesburg, in Gulfport's legions of temporary workers and the soaring real estate market in Wiggins.

Flanked by hurricane-devastated Hancock County and St. Tammany Parish, La., Pearl River County's population may have shot from about 52,000 to about 110,000, said county emergency management director Bobby Strahan.

"Law enforcement calls have doubled, fire calls have doubled, EMS calls have doubled," he said.

Meanwhile, Gulf Coast communities hope to regain their lost residents. Tracking population changes in Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties has been nearly impossible between the thousands who have left and the thousands of temporary contractors and relief workers who have come in, officials said.

School enrollment in Hancock County offers some sense of how population levels have changed - but many residents are retirees without young children, school officials noted.

Enrollment in the hard-hit Bay-Waveland School District - which was the last Mississippi district to resume classes on Nov. 7 - is at about 50 percent of pre-Katrina levels, said Dominica Favre, assistant to the superintendent.

"We're kind of thinking more families could be back after Christmas," said Favre. "People are finding places to stay, and there are more and more FEMA trailers every day."

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051220/NEWS01/51
2200302/1002

Three generations huddle to make a post-Katrina Christmas

Northeast Booster (MD)

by Mary T. Robbins

It's an unusual Christmas for Julie Keith and son Jeremy after escaping from Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi gulf coast. They now live under crowded circumstances with Julie's mother.

In September, daughter Julie Keith, 42, left her ravaged mobile home in Bay Saint Louis, Miss., with her daughter Ashleigh, 14, and son, Jeremy, 7.

"It's hard for everybody," acknowledged Julie's mother, Lil Trumbull, 78. "It's a disaster and you can't expect everything to be sweetness and light when it maybe wouldn't be even under normal circumstances."

Keith, a 1979 graduate of Towson High School, is grateful for the hospitality, but would like one thing for Christmas - privacy.

"I don't know how long it's going to take for things to be rebuilt in Mississippi, and what we will do." she said.

http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2.cfm?pnpID=807&NewsID=683583&CategoryID=580
0&show=localnews&om=1

God the refugee

The Guardian

by Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor

In generation after generation, in an un-newsworthy way, people sit up straight and realise God was born to a refugee family, modelled pure love, and was killed by a violent society so we all might enter a relationship of intimacy with Him. And in generation after generation, that astonishing discovery leads to a turnaround in the way people live and think.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,2763,1670073,00.html

Banning Christmas - For Real

Slate

By Andrew Santella

Liberal plots notwithstanding, the Americans who succeeded in banning the holiday were the Puritans of 17th-century Massachusetts. Between 1659 and 1681, Christmas celebrations were outlawed in the colony, and the law declared that anyone caught "observing, by abstinence from labor, feasting or any other way any such days as Christmas day, shall pay for every such offense five shillings." The Puritan disdain for the holiday endured: As late as 1869, public-school kids in Boston could be expelled for skipping class on Christmas Day.

Quakers, too, took a pass, reasoning that, in the words of 17th-century Quaker apologist Robert Barclay, "All days are alike holy in the sight of God." As late as 1810, the Philadelphia Democratic Press reported that few Pennsylvanians celebrated the holiday.

Observance of Christmas, or the lack thereof, was one way to differentiate among the Christian sects of Colonial and 19th-century America. Anglicans, Moravians, Dutch Reformed, and Lutherans, to name just a few, did; Quakers, Puritans, Separatists, Baptists, and some Presbyterians did not. In 1867, Reformed Church minister Henry Harbaugh protested that Presbyterians in his Pennsylvania neighborhood "spend the day working as on any other day. Their children grow up knowing nothing of brightly lit Christmas trees, nor Christmas presents. God have mercy on these Presbyterians, these pagans."

http://www.slate.com/id/2132387/

The Christmas He Dreamed

Washington Post Op-Ed

By Harold Meyerson

The white Christmases that Irving Berlin dreamed of weren't the earliest ones he used to know. He spent his first five Christmases in czarist Russia, and his only recollection of that time, at least the only one he'd acknowledge as an adult, was that of watching his neighbors burn his family's house to the ground in a good old-fashioned, Jew-hating pogrom.

So it's no surprise that when Berlin got around to writing his great Christmas song in 1941, nearly half a century after his family had fled the shtetl of Mohilev for New York's Lower East Side, it was flatly devoid of Christian imagery. It is, for all that, a religious song. It's just that Berlin's religion was America.

The success of "White Christmas" paved the way for a whole new genre of Christmas songs. Two years after Berlin's ballad first appeared, came "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Two years later came "The Christmas Song" ("Chestnuts roasting on an open fire"), and a year after that, "Let It Snow." By then the American Christmas song was about staying warm in winter, about staying connected to loved ones and traditions. It also practiced separation of church and song.

Many of those Christmas songwriters, of course, were Jewish and the children of immigrants; their deepest drive was to demonstrate beyond all doubt that they were assimilated, cosmopolitan, American. A Jew married to an Irish Catholic, Berlin raised his three daughters as nominal Protestants. Who better to write a non-Christian Christmas song? (Berlin's may have been an extreme case, but in the middle of the 20th century, Jewish assimilationism was so pervasive that it gave rise to the following crack: What's the difference between Reform Jews and Unitarians? Unitarians don't have Christmas trees.)

Berlin kept Christmas in the public square and, more than anyone before or since, sent it out over the public airwaves. But it was an American, not a Christian, Christmas. And by the crass index of number of recordings sold, and the not-so-crass index of number of spirits touched, Berlin's nonsectarian holiday has been the predominant version of Christmas in this country for the past 60 years.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR2005122001011.
html

Student allowed to share Christian message (after threat of lawsuit)

Dallas Fort-Worth Star-Telegram

by Eva-Marie Ayala, Start-Telegram Staff Writer

MANSFIELD - A fourth-grader who was initially told he could not share candy canes with religious messages did so at his class party Thursday morning.

Jaren Burch, a student at Tipps Elementary School, intended to bring the sweets with a story that told how they related to Jesus. Campus officials said he couldn't bring them with religious stories attached and a First Amendment discussion began.

On Wednesday, the Liberty Legal Institute, which was called by the Burches, sent the district a demand letter to comply with the student's First Amendment right to religious expression.

"Schools need to stop acting irrational and being overly paranoid," said Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel of the Plano-based nonprofit organization. "The law itself is that schools cannot push religion but students themselves can be free in their religious expression."

"It was not a district policy but had been a practice, or guidelines for principals, to try and be sensitive to students from all different backgrounds and religions at this time of year," he said. "In this particular case, we determined that we've gone a little too far with those guidelines."

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/13422219.htm

Battles rages over celebrating holidays

Yahoo News

By Ellen Wulfhorst

Fox News anchor John Gibson wrote a book "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is Worse than You Thought."

Bah humbug, said radio talk show host Bill Press, author of "How the Republicans Stole Christmas." "People have been saying 'Happy Holidays' for a hundred years at least," he said. "This is nothing new. It just celebrates the diversity of America."

He blames politics. "It is all by design," he said. "The more people are talking about who's saying 'Happy Holidays' and who's saying 'Merry Christmas,' the less people are talking about Karl Rove, torture, Tom DeLay, the war in Iraq and other hot issues.

The debate has become comic grist. "Every time you say 'Happy Holidays,' an angel gets AIDS," warned television comedian Jon Stewart.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051218/us_nm/holidays_america_dc

Most Americans like Christmas cheer

Washington Times

By Jennifer Harper

It's nearly unanimous: 97 percent of Americans say they are not bothered by public references to Christmas according to a new Gallup poll released yesterday.

The practice also doesn't offend those of other faiths -- or no faith. The poll revealed that only 8 percent of non-Christians and 5 percent of those with no faith were perturbed by displays or advertisements which mention "Christmas" rather than a generic or secular equivalent.

The finding was "surprising, and perhaps counter to the inclusive rationale for saying 'happy holidays,'" the survey stated.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20051216-125643-4064r.htm

City Bars Christian Hip-Hop Dancers from Performing

San Diego Union-Tribune

By Shannon McMahon, Union-Tribune Staff Writer

CHULA VISTA – At the city's annual holiday celebration, a rabbi lighted a menorah. A dance troupe performed a traditional prayer to the gods. But six young girls were told they they couldn't perform because they were wearing shirts emblazoned with a silver cross and the words "Jesus Christ" on the front.

The "Jesus Christ Dancers," a group of 8-to 12-year-olds who describe themselves as Christian hip-hop dancers, were scheduled to make their citywide debut at the Dec. 3 holiday festival. Moments before the group was to take the stage, employees from the city's Parks and Recreation Department barred them from performing, saying they did not want to convey a religious message in the show.

In a council meeting Tuesday night, Mayor Steve Padilla said city staff members turned the dancers away "out of an overabundance of caution." "We sent the wrong message to a very important segment of our community," he said. Padilla then apologized on behalf of the city.

Dance instructor Lita Ramirez said that she described the group as a Christian hip-hop dance troupe when she sought permission to enter the festival. "There was a Hawaiian prayer dance that was allowed to perform," Ramirez said. "There was seductive belly dancing and songs saying 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas' and 'Little Drummer Boy' and 'Feliz Navidad.'" A tree-lighting ceremony, sponsored by the mayor's office, followed the event. During that ceremony, the mayor introduced a rabbi, who lighted a menorah.

"The city created a holiday event and then they turned around and the only person who wasn't invited was Jesus," said Dean Broyles, an attorney.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20051217-9999-2m17jesus.html

Homesick 'Katrina Kid' finds a welcome

San Jose Mercury News

By Dana Hull, Mercury News

In his baggy shorts and navy blue school T-shirt, Troy Adam blends in with other students at Bellarmine College Prep -- until you hear his to-die-for Louisiana drawl.

Troy, 14, is a "Katrina Kid," one of thousands of Gulf Coast teenagers who fled Hurricane Katrina and are now adjusting to a new school, new teachers, new friends and an entirely new life thousands of miles from home.

Troy's parents had just closed on their new house in Chalmette, in St. Bernard Parish east of New Orleans, when Katrina hit. The family evacuated with just a few changes of clothes and Yeager, their Jack Russell terrier. They drove west for days, sleeping in rest stops along Interstate 10 because motels were booked or did not accept pets. They arrived, anxious and exhausted, at the East San Jose home of their extended family.

Bellarmine College Prep, the all-boys Jesuit school, took Troy as a student, waiving the $10,800 yearly tuition fee. Bellarmine then set the family up in a house it owns on Elm Street, right near campus.

Bellarmine's faculty and staff immediately comment on Troy's unflagging politeness. Everything is "Yes, ma'am" and "No, sir," phrases rarely muttered in the corridors of most California high schools.

"He's a great kid. He's so polite," said John Scherbart, a religion teacher who arranged for Troy to speak at the school's Thanksgiving prayer service. "I asked Troy if he could share his story, and he told it very profoundly and very sincerely. He had the auditorium riveted."

Troy's parents flew home to check on their house in early October, as soon as the parish let residents back in, for the unpleasant job of throwing out rotting food and soiled possessions. The ground floor of the house was five feet deep in mud and muck; the upstairs bedrooms are fine. "It smelled like when you go to the zoo and visit the reptile exhibit."

Rebuilding is far from easy. Their homeowners insurance does not cover flood damage, an enormous bone of contention among Katrina victims. They are almost tapped out financially. And though they are eager to repair their house, every electrician, plumber and contractor in the New Orleans area is booked solid for months.

"FEMA's giving out trailers, so we're waiting to get a trailer on our lot," said Troy. "But there's no grocery store open yet, so it's kind of hard to actually go back."

http://www.mercurynews.com:80/mld/mercurynews/news/13463845.htm

Dazed By Disasters

Christianity Today editorial

The late Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is reported to have said, "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." Of course, a little emotional anesthesia right now may be understandable, given the extraordinary natural disasters the world has faced. Starting with the Florida hurricanes in 2004, to the devastating Asian tsunami a year ago and hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma last fall, Christians have given repeatedly, often putting overmatched government bureaucracies to shame.

Then, in Pakistan, more than 73,000 people perished and 100,000 were injured when an earthquake struck on October 8.

Yet after a brief burst of coverage, the media have moved on to other topics. Many American Christians apparently have, too. "Some people probably are becoming numb to these tragedies," Richard Stearns of World Vision told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "What we call 'compassion fatigue' may be setting in."

Christian workers in far-away Pakistan report that giving for earthquake relief is inadequate. Perhaps 80 villages in hard-to-reach Kaghan Valley have yet to see an aid worker, and the tent shelters and hospitals hastily set up in other areas provide the homeless with scant protection during the onset of winter.

"The [nongovernmental organizations] are facing significant funding crises," workers reported in a dispatch. "Entire villages and economies have collapsed, and it seems the West is already bored with it all."

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) warns that the risk of natural disasters worldwide is rising due to growing populations, increasing urbanization, inadequate infrastructure, and poverty.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/001/10.28.html

Santa Robs Texas Bank

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

A man dressed as Old St. Nick walked into a Wachovia Bank in Arlington, Texas early Tuesday and told the teller he had a gun. No weapon was produced, and no one was injured in the heist.

He was wearing a red Santa jacket with white fur around the wrists and collar and black buttons, khaki pants and white tennis shoes. He had the matching hat — red with the fur brim.

During the robbery, he pulled the Santa hat over his eyes and looked out through two holes cut into the hat.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/12/20/national/a134755S32.DTL&
type=bondage

Alaska Man Builds 16-Foot Snowzilla

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

Anchorage, Alaska (AP) -- With the help of his kids and neighbors, Billy Ray Powers built more than just a snowman — they've dubbed his 16-plus-foot-tall creation "Snowzilla."

After using up all the snow in the family's yard, they turned to neighbors' yards and carried buckets on sleds. They hand-packed the snowman like an ice-cream cone.

It took a month to complete the project.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/12/20/national/a043949S25.
DTL&type=bondage

Seagate to Acquire Maxtor

San Jose Mercury News

By Therese Poletti, Mercury News

Seagate Technology, the world's largest disk drive maker, plans to announce today the purchase of its struggling rival, Maxtor of Milpitas, in a stock deal valued at about $1.9 billion, according to sources familiar with the transaction.

The deal would increase Seagate's manufacturing scale, which would help bring production costs down.

While the disk drive industry has been rebounding in the past year, due in part to the huge demand for more storage in consumer electronics devices, Maxtor has not benefited as much as Seagate or their other big rival, Western Digital of Irvine.

But after Apple Computer unveiled its iPod nano in September -- an ultra-thin digital music player that uses a flash memory card to store songs instead of a mini disk drive -- investors grew nervous again about disk drive stocks. Seagate was one of the suppliers of small disk drives for earlier iPods.

http://www.mercurynews.com:80/mld/mercurynews/news/13455647.htm

The Poor Need Not Apply

New York Times Editorial

Federal loans to rebuild homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina have been flowing to wealthy neighborhoods in New Orleans but not to poor ones.

The government has processed only a third of the 276,000 home loan applications it has received. And it has rejected a whopping 82 percent of those, a higher percentage than in previous disasters, on the grounds that applicants didn't have high enough incomes or good enough credit ratings.

The Bush administration encouraged poor people to apply for low-interest loans to rebuild their homes while keeping rules that would make it clearly impossible for most of them to qualify. It has engaged in the worst kind of cruelty - one that encourages the poor to think help is on the way, then swats down anyone who actually requests the promised assistance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/opinion/21wed2.html?th&emc=th

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/national/nationalspecial/15loans.html

Teach, Don't Preach, the Bible

New York Times Op-Ed

by Bruce Feiler

In the landmark 1963 Abington case (which also involved Pennsylvania public schools), the Supreme Court outlawed reading the Bible as part of morning prayers but left the door open for studying the Bible. Writing for the 8-1 majority, Justice Thomas Clark stated that the Bible is "worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities," and added, "Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistent with the First Amendment."

Though the far right may complain that this academic approach to teaching the Bible locks God out of the classroom, and the far left may complain that it sneaks God in, the vast majority of Americans would embrace it.

The Fourth National Survey of Religion and Politics, completed in 2004 by the University of Akron, shows that only 12.6 percent of Americans consider themselves "traditionalist evangelical Protestants," which the survey equates with the term "religious right." A mere 10.7 percent of Americans define themselves as "secular" or "atheist, agnostic." The vast majority of Americans are what survey-takers term centrist or modernist in their religious views.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/opinion/21feiler.html?th&emc=th

Mark says: I think these figures are suspect. The problem may be terminology. "Evangelicals" don't always consider themselves "mainstream" or "traditionalist." The combination of "traditionalist evangelical" may be unfamiliar to the poll respondents. Also, may traditional Catholics consider themselves part of the "religious right."

ACLU Objects to Wellington's Nativity Scene

Palm Beach Post

By Dwayne Robinson, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Wellington has added a Nativity scene -- along with a Santa Claus, reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and dreidels -- to its holiday display. The crèche was donated, while the other items cost about $5,000.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, while acknowledging that the display probably meets the "silly standards the U.S. Supreme Court may have set 20 years ago" of having nonreligious components accompanying religious ones, has objections.

For one, Wellington opened up its Community Center as a public forum when it included the religious symbols of Christianity and Judaism and now must allow other religious groups, ranging from Wiccans or Buddhists, to also place emblems, the organization argues.

"It is one of the loveliest Nativity scenes I've ever seen," Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said. "What the city ought to do is donate it to a church."

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/pbcwest/content/local_news/epaper/2005/12/15/w1b_na
tivity_1215.html

Activist Judge Cancels Christmas

The Onion

In a sudden and unexpected blow to the Americans working to protect the holiday, liberal U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt ruled the private celebration of Christmas unconstitutional Monday.

In addition to forbidding the celebration of Christmas in any form, Judge Reinhardt has made it illegal to say "Merry Christmas." Instead, he has ruled that Americans must say "Happy Holidays" or "Vacaciones Felices" if they wish to extend good tidings.

Within an hour of the judge's verdict, National Guard troops were mobilized to enforce the controversial ruling. Said Pvt. Stanley Cope: "We're fighting an unpopular war on Christmas, but what can we do? The military has no choice but to take orders from a lone activist judge."

"Why did the bad man take away Christmas?" 5-year-old Danny Dover said. "I made a card for my mommy out of paper and glue, and now I can't give it to her." Shortly after Dover issued his statement, police kicked down his door, removed his holiday tree, confiscated his presents, and crushed his homemade card underfoot.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43438

'Happy Holidays' also has religious meaning

Chicago Tribune

By Nathan Bierma

While the White House, along with other government officials and retailers this year, opts to use the word "holiday" as its generic, non-religious alternative to "Christmas," linguists point out that the word "holiday" itself has religious etymological roots. In fact, religious references are buried in the histories of many words we now use without thinking about their history.

It's less than obvious that the word "holiday" has the word "holy" in it, as in "holy-day." It began in Old English as two words, "halig daeg" ("holy day") that were combined into one as early as 1,000 years ago, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

"The names of the days of the week commemorate the sun (Sunday) and the moon (Monday), and then five pagan gods: Tiw [Tuesday], Odin [or Woden, "Wednesday"], Thor [Thursday], Freya [Friday], and Saturn [Saturday]," Geoffrey Pullum writes. "If we were to start obsessively analyzing all of these names for religious links to object to, we would have our work cut out forever."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-0512130331dec14,1,3690365.story?ctrac
k=1&cset=true

In Iran, religious freedom means keeping your mouth shut

National Review

By Kenneth R. Timmerman

A few weeks ago in Iran, an Iranian convert to Christianity was kidnapped from his home in northeastern Iran and stabbed to death. The vigilantes who took him tossed his bleeding body in front of his home a few hours later, a stark warning against any who would follow his example.

Ghorban Tori is the fifth Protestant pastor assassinated in Iran in the past eleven years. Three of the five were former Muslims, making them subject under Iranian law to the death penalty for having committed apostasy.

Tori's murder came just days after Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called an open meeting with the nation's 30 provincial governors, and vowed to crack down on the burgeoning movement of house churches across Iran.

"I will stop Christianity in this country," Ahmadinejad reportedly said.

http://www.nationalreview.com/voices/timmerman200512150838.asp

Christmas Quotations

Christianity Today

From the human perspective, when you compare God to the other gods of the other religions in the world, you have to say our God is really sort of odd. He uses the most common of people, people that aren't any different from any of us here; he comes in the most common of ways, when by his Spirit an anonymous young woman is found to be with child. And the strangest thing is that he comes at all—he's not the Above-Us-God, too holy to come down. This God's love is so immense that he wants to come down. And he has proven his love by the fact that he did come down and touch our ground.

James R. Van Tholen, Where All Hope Lies

We do not believe that the virgin mother gave birth to a son and that he is the Lord and Savior unless, added to this, I believe the second thing, namely, that he is my Savior and Lord.

Martin Luther, Sermon on the Afternoon of Christmas Day 1530

Do you want to see the humility of God? Look in the manger and see him lying there. Surely this is our God. Seeing an infant, I wonder how this could be the one who says, "Do not I fill heaven and earth?" I see a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Is this the one who is clothed in the beautiful glory of unapproachable light?

Listen! He is crying. Is this the one who thunders in the heaven making the angels lower their wings? Yes, but he has emptied himself in order to fill us.

Guerric of Igny, Liturgical Sermons

Despite our efforts to keep him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: a virgin's womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked "No Entrance" and left through a door marked "No Exit."

Peter Larson, Prism (Jan-Feb 2001)

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/012/22.62.html

Jar-Jar's Bible

Christianity Today

I'm not sure if this is a joke or what, but this article by Nate Anderson in Christianity Today claims that the American Bible Society has translated "De Nyew Testament" into Gullah, an English Creole language spoken by 250,000 Americans in Georgia and the Carolinas.

THE LORD'S PRAYER in Gullah
We Fada wa dey een heaben,
leh ebrybody hona ya nyame.
We pray dat soon ya gwine
rule oba de wol.
Wasoneba ting ya wahn,
leh um be so een dis wol
same like dey een heaben.
Gii we de food wa we need
dis day yah an ebry day.
Fagib we fa we sin,
same like we da fagib dem people
wa do bad ta we.
Leh we dohn hab haad test
wen Satan try we.
Keep we fom ebil.

Is this for real?

Amid Devastation, Mounds of Toxic Waste

New York Times

by John Schwartz

There is so much storm debris in Louisiana that some of it has to be destroyed again.

Bulldozers feed tree limbs and the jagged shards of homes into a trailer-size grinder. The manufacturer calls this machine the annihilator. It can chew iron sewer covers as if they were Necco wafers, and it transforms the chaotic mixture to something resembling mulch. It can reduce the volume of debris by two-thirds. It is part of an effort by the Army Corps of Engineers to make the most of landfills that have to accommodate an unprecedented onslaught of debris.

Dump trucks will be feeding the annihilator for some time to come. The pile so far is made up of debris cleared from roads, ditches and levees. Demolition of ruined homes here in Plaquemines Parish will not start until next month.

There have been 222,000 refrigerators, washers and dryers gathered, and more than a million containers of hazardous waste have been plucked from land and sea. There are fuel and lubricants, pesticides and solvents, medical waste, paint cans and more, and mystery fluids that must be categorized before disposal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/science/20clea.html

In Mississippi, Canvas Cities Rise Amid Hurricane's Rubble

New York Times

by Eric Lipton

PASS CHRISTIAN, Miss., Dec. 18 - A stone's throw from the Gulf of Mexico, on a muddy gravel lot that used to be a Little League field, a makeshift village has emerged for some of the many families who, as winter approaches, are still homeless because of Hurricane Katrina.

The tent city here is one of three set up in recent weeks along the Mississippi coast, making room for families now that the emergency shelters have closed and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is working through a backlog of some 5,000 families still on waiting lists for government-supplied travel trailers or mobile homes.

In Pass Christian, the need is especially dire. The city hall, the two public libraries, the local supermarket, a senior citizens' home and the schools are all either severely damaged or nothing but rubble. The work of clearing debris and the crushed remains of about 2,000 houses is far short of the halfway mark. As a result, construction of large amounts of new housing is still months off.

With the nighttime temperatures dropping as low as the 30's, local officials are trying to offer an alternative for families who want to stay in the area and would have few choices other than to sleep in cars.

The tents, built by the Navy Seabees at a cost of $1 million, can be heated and cooled, and have plywood floors and walls that create an 18-by-32-foot wooden box inside the exterior fabric.

Free meals, financed by the federal government, are served in a giant white tent. The toilets are portable, without running water, and are lined up near a tractor-trailer that serves as a shower house.

His tent "is a bit like a tomb," said Dave Frisby, 55, a handyman whose home and tools were washed away by Hurricane Katrina. "It can be depressing."

At another tent city in Long Beach, five miles east of Pass Christian, the entire inventory of Robert Stover's possessions consists of a mattress on the floor, a Bible, a few donated books and a plastic bucket that he turns upside down and tops with a small pillow to create a chair.

Desperate for work, Mr. Stover, 45, a former plumber at an area hospital, found a job at a cigarette distribution warehouse. But it is in Gulfport, miles away, and he has no car, so he spends three hours each day walking to work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/national/nationalspecial/20tent.html

Hackers Break Into Computer-Security Firm's Customer Database

Washington Post

By Brian Krebs, Washington Post Staff Writer

Guidance Software -- the leading provider of software used to diagnose hacker break-ins -- has itself been hacked, resulting in the exposure of financial and personal data connected to thousands of customers.

Hackers broke into a company database and made off with approximately 3,800 customer credit card numbers. The Pasadena, Calif.-based company said the incident occurred sometime in November.

Guidance stored customer records in unencrypted databases, and indefinitely retained customers' "card value verification" (CVV) numbers, the three-digit codes on the back of credit cards that are meant to protect against fraud in online and telephone sales, according to Colbert and the notification letter sent to customers.

Merchant guidelines published by both Visa and Mastercard require sellers to encrypt customer credit-card databases. They are also prohibited from retaining CVV numbers for any longer than it takes to verify a given transaction. Companies that violate those standards can be fined $500,000 per violation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/19/AR2005121900928.
html

The Christmas Kerfuffle

San Francisco Chronicle

(The most coherent discussion I've seen yet.)

By Cinnamon Stillwell

Upon leaving a San Francisco shop last week, I wished the clerk a cheery "Merry Christmas," only to be met with a surly "Happy Holidays" in return. With that simple exchange, our positions at opposite ends of the political spectrum were revealed.

The celebration of Christmas has indeed been overshadowed by politics in recent years, to the point where every greeting is pregnant with meaning. And even non-Christians are swept up in the Christmas kerfuffle.

As a member of the Jewish faith, I've never once felt intimidated, bothered or offended by Christmas. In fact, I grew up celebrating Christmas and still do to this day. Not the religious aspects, but rather the festive trappings of the holiday. I also light the menorah candles each year to mark Hanukkah. While this might earn me the disapproval of traditionalists on both sides of the fence, I confess it simply to illustrate that one holiday need not endanger another.

Yet the political battle over Christmas rages on. Conservatives are upset over what has been dubbed the "war on Christmas," while liberals accuse them of overreacting to what is essentially a non-event. But who's right?

All across the country, city halls, chain stores, and public squares are erecting "holiday trees" in lieu of Christmas trees. Nativity scenes are being banned in town squares, public buildings and even some malls. The singing of Christmas carols such as "Silent Night" in public schools and caroling in public parks and public housing are becoming rarities. Court cases brought by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State have taken the clause that never appeared in the constitution to ridiculous levels -- and chipping away at Christmas is just one of the results.

Why is it that Christmas is the only holiday that must be downplayed so that other religions feel more "included"? We don't insist on calling the Muslim holiday of Ramadan by any other name, nor do we impose such restrictions on the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. In all fairness, we would have to label all religious and cultural occasions "holidays," not just Christmas. I wonder how long it would take for members of other religions to express their outrage? Yet when Christians fight back, as they are now with a concerted campaign to stem the anti-Christmas tide, they are ridiculed or vilified by their opponents.

This double standard when it comes to Christians can be seen in many spheres. A friend was shopping recently in one of those cute little neighborhood stores San Francisco prides itself on when she noticed that the man ringing her up was wearing a T-shirt that read, "So Many Rightwing Christians, So Few Lions." No doubt this was intended to be humorous, but the message has serious implications. Simply substitute the words "Jews," "blacks" or "gays" and the outrage would be immediate. But when it comes to Christians, such offensive rhetoric is somehow acceptable. There's even a term for it -- Christianophobia.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/12/20/cstillwell.D
TL

America's Most Popular Christmas Music

New York Times

By Judy Rosen

Mannheim Steamroller has sold more than 27 million albums, more than Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder, R.E.M. or Eminem, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Producer Chip Davis has racked up these astonishing sales figures operating out of his home base in Omaha, Neb., releasing all his records on his own label, American Gramaphone.

"Chip Davis owns Christmas," says Sean Compton, programming vice president of Clear Channel Communications, which owns more than 1,200 commercial radio stations. "He is the Christmas king." Years ago, Mannheim Steamroller surpassed Elvis Presley as the top-selling Christmas artist of all time; even those who've never heard of Mannheim Steamroller have most likely heard its music. This year, more than 160 radio stations around the country have switched to an all-Christmas music format during the holiday season, some beginning as early as the first week of November. Mannheim Steamroller dominates those radio playlists, with as many as 15 songs in regular rotation on some stations. If you've wandered down a department-store aisle in the last few weeks, Davis's versions of "Silent Night" or "Deck the Halls" have probably drifted into earshot. The music is strange: a hodgepodge of rock rhythms, blipping synthesizers, Renaissance instrumentation and orchestral extravagance - a big, bright and, even by Christmas standards, fearlessly schlocky sound that Davis has called "18th-century classical rock." In Davis's reworked carols, the showy time-signature changes and keyboard passages of 70's progressive rock rub up against lutes, cornemuses and other 15th-century instruments; classical piano filigrees and gusty Muzak strings rise over a thudding backbeat.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/magazine/18christmas.html

This Year, the Meaning of Dec. 25 Is Twofold

Washington Post

By Sue Anne Pressley, Washington Post Staff Writer

The first night of Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish festival of lights, falls on Christmas Day for the first time since 1959 and for only the fourth time in 100 years.

For kids and retailers, there should be no argument with the dual fete because it means a bonanza in some cases: double the presents.

But in some households, there may be a few debates: Will it be mashed potatoes with that big meal or potato latkes?

Perhaps the best thing about the holiday coincidence is the obvious point: fewer people left out of festivities that day.

Interfaith families appreciate what the two holidays share: Both are happy social occasions, they say, and both emphasize the beauty of lights. The central story of Hanukkah is the miracle of the lights, when oil that seemed sufficient to light a temple menorah for one night managed to last for eight.

"Both Christmas and Hanukkah are celebrations of joy. In fact, having them together, except for the fact that people might have to race around from one table to another, might be a way of underscoring our common ground: 'Let's bring everybody closer together.' "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/11/AR2005121101163.
html

If you don’t want to be merry, then to hell with you.

The Call (Woonsocket. RI)

By Jim Baron

I celebrate Christmas. I am happy at this time of the year and I wish you merriment as well. That’s all. What’s to be bothered about there? I’m not saying that you have to celebrate Christmas, too. I am not insisting that you recognize Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal savior, and mark this as the time of His birth.

I’m just saying be merry. If you don’t want to be merry, then to hell with you. Just don’t blame me because you’re miserable. This is Christmastime and I wished you a merry one. You can wish me a merry whatever holiday you are celebrating and I will accept that sentiment in the spirit in which you offered it. Even if I don’t personally celebrate Chanukah or Kwanzaa or whatever, I am not going to get insulted if you wish me a happy one. I’m going to consider it a token of brotherhood and good cheer and say something nice back to you.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15737162&BRD=1712&PAG=461&dept_id=2435
8&rfi=6

Happy A'Phabet Day

Dayton Daily News

By Jeff Bruce

"No L Day." Get it?

If nothing else, all this fuss about how to greet one another, address our Christmas, er, holiday cards or name the, uh, national illuminated pine tree should remind us what a great thing it is to live in America.

You take your life in your hands in some corners of this planet should you question the accepted theological norms. Try out a cheery "Merry Christmas" in Tehran or a hearty "Happy Hanukkah" in Damascus and see how long it takes before you discover the validity of your personal beliefs in the afterlife.

We're spoiled. You have to enjoy a highly elevated quality of life for something this silly to rise as a serious topic of conversation.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/opinion/content/opinion/daily/1211jeff.html

Getting Around, Made Easier

New York Times

This article about Global Positioning System navigation, by Michael Marriott in the New York Times, notes that

In some instances, roofers helping to rebuild homes and businesses in Hurricane Katrina's wake have been using hand-held G.P.S. devices to locate job sites in areas where street addresses have been blown away, workers say.

Travel Light, but Well

New York Times

Mary and I might be doing some traveling next year, and the references in this article by Michelle Slatalla might come in handy.

It's interesting what some consider "cheap" travel. On our road trip from San Jose, California to San Antonio, Texas last July, we tried really hard to stay at what we called "flea bag" motels along Route 66. These were usually about $30 per night.

But Ms. Slatalla considers $20 cheap for rubber rain boots from Target. Sigh. I would buy that kind of stuff at Goodwill if I couldn't find it at the Dollar Store. On the other hand, it really is hard to find a decent umbrella for less than $25.

The article is really more suited to air travel than road travel, but we intend to do a fair amount of both.

From the article:

Internet sites - like Packinglight.com, Orvis.com and Travelessentials.com - sell a wide array of travel gear. I saw lightweight luggage ( Magellans.com's eight-pound rolling tote is $129) and a hemp fanny pack ($14.95 at Goodhumans.com ) and even foldable travel high chairs ($19.99 at Burlingtoncoatfactory.com).

I resisted the urge to buy an adorable little travel sewing kit ($3) at Walkabouttravelgear.com and instead focused on the more pressing need to make my husband's huge collection of electronic equipment fully operational in Paris. Walkabouttravelgear.com's comprehensive guide, "Solving the Riddle of International Electricity," included a voltage and adapter index with a pull-down menu to enable customers to shop by country.

The Wind-Defying Auto-Open umbrella from Hammacher Schlemmer is attractive and sturdy and has a "patented vented mesh system" to "eliminate umbrella inversion" on windy days. At Hammacher.com, I found a collapsible one-pound version ($24.95)

Retailers and governments heed the wrath of Christians

Los Angeles Times Commentary

By Stephanie Simon, Times Staff Writer

For the third year in a row, Christians nationwide have mobilized to put the holy back in the holiday. And they are winning battle after battle.

Their most publicized victories have come in the retail realm, where they have urged stores to acknowledge that the December shopping frenzy is not just about scoring a cheap DVD player, but also about celebrating Christ's birth.

But they haven't stopped at the mall door.

At least 1,500 attorneys have volunteered to sue any town that tries to keep Nativity scenes out of its holiday displays. About 8,000 public school teachers stand ready to report any principal who removes "Silent Night" from the choir program.

The volunteers are armed with a seven-page memo that lays out the case for Jesus in public school concerts, for creches in the classroom and for mangers in city parks (as long as the religious references are balanced with secular songs and decorations).

That message has even made its way into politics. After a decade as a generic holiday tree, the twinkling conifer at the Capitol is a Christmas tree once more, thanks to a request by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

http://www.latimes.com/features/religion/la-na-christmas9dec09,1,6794257.story?c
oll=la-news-religion&ctrack=1&cset=true

FEMA Ordered to Extend Hotel Stays

Washington Post

By Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post Staff Writer

A federal judge in New Orleans yesterday ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to continue paying the hotel bills of thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees until as late as Feb. 7, criticizing the government for inaction 15 weeks after the storm.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ordered the disaster response agency to pay for storm victims' rooms for at least two weeks once a decision is made on granting them rental housing assistance or until Feb. 7, whichever comes first. The agency had planned to stop subsidizing hotel rooms for evacuees on Jan. 7, in an effort to push them into longer-term housing, which it says is better for them and less costly to the government.

Duval's order applies to thousands of the estimated 85,000 evacuee households whose housing aid applications FEMA has not yet processed.

In a 27-page order, Duval issued a stern rebuke to FEMA and the Bush administration for responding sluggishly to a catastrophe that has killed more than 1,200 people and displaced hundreds of thousands of people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

FEMA is paying for about 42,000 hotel rooms in 47 states and the District in a program that has cost about $350 million so far. The agency last month announced a Dec. 1 deadline for ending the hotel program and moving evacuees into a rental assistance program, but extended it to Dec. 15 after widespread criticism.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/12/AR2005121201468.
html

FEMA Expands Hotel Aid Of Evacuees

Washington Post

Associated Press

Evacuees from hurricanes Rita and Katrina may remain in hotels at the government's expense while their applications for rental assistance are processed, officials announced Saturday.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency continues to pay for an estimated 42,000 hotel rooms in 47 states and the District. FEMA recently pledged to continue paying hotel bills until Jan. 7, after its previous Dec. 1 deadline was met with widespread criticism.

FEMA has spent about $325 million on its hotel housing program since Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, followed by Rita on Sept. 24. At the program's height, FEMA was housing 85,000 families in hotels.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/11/AR2005121100665.
html

Residents Fight Shift in Zoning for Gulf Coast

New York Times

by Eric Lipton

Some residents of the Mississippi coast intend to ignore a plea from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that new homes be elevated on stilts.

The conflict between FEMA's request and resident desires demonstrates a broad clash here along the Gulf Coast over whether to cede large swaths of land to nature, to rebuild much as it was, or to rebuild homes, at a higher price, with more robust foundations and on structures that raise them above the ground.

In Mississippi, elected officials from Long Beach, Pass Christian and unincorporated sections of Hancock County have decided to allow residents to rebuild, at least for now, according to the existing flood maps. In Jackson County and communities including Waveland, D'Iberville and Bay St. Louis, local officials have agreed to add about four feet to the required minimum elevations in existing flood zones, but have declined, so far, to expand the flood zones according to FEMA's recommended boundaries.

In communities that have resisted, elected officials say they fear now is the worst time to radically increase land-use standards, forcing residents who have already lost almost everything to dig deeper into their pockets to rebuild.

Raising a new house off the ground to comply with the proposed FEMA standards would cost $2,000 to $30,000 depending on the value of the house and the type of foundation required to meet the potential flood intensity. The work could be as simple as an elevated foundation or as complex as reinforced, deep-set structural columns that would support a house entirely on tall stilts. How high the house would be off the ground would depend on its location, but the heights would be from a few feet to 20 feet, with more typical range being 8 to 14 feet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/national/nationalspecial/12flood.html

Christians scramble to aid earthquake victims before worst of winter hits

Christianity Today

by Deann Alford

Evangelical ministries are hurriedly responding to Operation Winter Race, a U.N. effort to gather and distribute aid to Kashmir and Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province before snow and ice cut off devastated mountain villages from transport trucks and helicopters.

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake and aftershocks devastated these regions on October 8. By mid-November, the U.N. reported more than 87,000 dead and 100,000 injured in about 11,500 square miles of some of the world's most rugged terrain. Len Stitt, director of Shelter Now Pakistan, said at least as many people as died in the earthquake may now perish from illness and exposure to harsh winter weather. Children are most vulnerable. Some 3 million people are homeless, the U.N. reports.

Stitt said that Shelter Now has supplied 8,500 tents equipped with stoves, blankets, and mattresses. Shelter Now has employed 54 Pakistanis in unaffected Peshawar to build 1,200 Quonset-hut-style tents from layers of parachute and rubberized plastic fabric and pvc pipe. Each tent, which costs $135, can house an average six-person family for at least six months.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/001/4.21.html

'Podcast' Is the Word of the Year

Yahoo News, Newswire

Only a year ago, podcasting was an arcane activity, the domain of a few techies and self-admitted "geeks." Now you can hear everything from NASCAR coverage to NPR's All Things Considered in downloadable audio files called "podcasts". That's why the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary have selected "podcast" as the Word of the Year for 2005. Podcast, defined as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player."

Runners-up for the 2005 Word of the Year include: bird flu, ICE, IDP, IED, lifehack, persistent vegetative state, reggaeton, rootkit, squick, sudoku, trans fat.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/051205/nym208.html?.v=26

Mark says: I still haven't listened to one! However, I have lots of mp3 files of messages from Calvary Chapel San Jose, and I recently bought two versions of the Bible on mp3 (New King James version and New Living Translation, each available in the Calvary Chapel bookstore for about $2).

Study Concludes Beethoven Died From Lead Poisoning

Washington Post

By Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer

By focusing the most powerful X-ray beam in the Western Hemisphere on six of Ludwig van Beethoven's hairs and a few pieces of his skull, scientists have gathered what they say is conclusive evidence that the famous composer died of lead poisoning.

The work, done at the Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory outside of Chicago, confirms earlier hints that lead may have caused Beethoven's decades of poor health, which culminated in a long and painful death in 1827 at age 56.

"There's no doubt in my mind . . . he was a victim of lead poisoning," said Bill Walsh, an expert in forensic analysis and chief scientist at Pfeiffer Treatment Center in Warrenville, Ill., who led the study with energy department researcher Ken Kemner.

Still a mystery, however, is the source of Beethoven's lead exposure, which evidence now suggests occurred over many years. Among the possibilities are his liberal indulgence in wine consumed from lead cups or perhaps a lifetime of medical treatments, which in the 19th century were often laced with heavy metals.

Beethoven developed serious health problems in his early twenties, which grew worse over time and reflected many of the symptoms of lead poisoning, including severe stomach problems.

The composer was deaf by his late twenties, a problem of questionable relevance because deafness has only rarely been associated with lead poisoning.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/05/AR2005120501937.
html

We know terrorism, and this ain't it

Washington Post

By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press

Saddam, dressed in a dark suit and white shirt and clutching a Quran, complained that he and the seven other defendants were tired and had been deprived of opportunities to shower, have a change of clothes, exercise or go for a smoke.

"This is terrorism," he declared.

http://www.mercurynews.com:80/mld/mercurynews/news/13335609.htm

Some retailers give the word 'Christmas' a nod

USA Today

The American Family Association cited 10 retailers (Kroger, Dell, Target, OfficeMax, Walgreens, Sears, Staples, Lowe's, J.C. Penney and Best Buy) for omitting Christmas in ads. It urges shoppers to go where Christmas is recognized.

Chains that are giving Christmas a nod:

• The Catholic League says it scored a victory when it pushed Wal-Mart to have a Christmas category on its website, which had Kwanzaa and Hanukkah gift sections.

• Federated Department Stores — owner of Macy's and Bloomingdale's — is making sure its Christmas message is heard after consumer backlash last year over a supposed policy forbidding employees to wish shoppers "Merry Christmas."

• Ads for Dillard's department stores say: "Discover Christmas. Discover Dillard's."

• Christmas songs and trees are two of the things Victoria's Secret won't be bashful about in its lingerie show airing Tuesday on CBS.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2005-12-01-acknowledging-christm
as_x.htm

And now it's Christmas

Salt Lake Tribune

By Robert Kirby, Tribune Columnist

And now it's Christmas, celebrated throughout America by maxing out credit cards and brawling over parking spaces at the mall.

Let's not kid ourselves. Giving gifts is what Christmas is all about. Without this blatant materialism, Christmas would be just another Thanksgiving where everyone sat around and ate and pretended to be grateful.

The most expensive Christmas gift I typically give goes to my wife. Not because she demands it, but because she deserves it. No one, not even God, has put up with more crap from me than she has.

The coolest gifts are the ones that you don't have to budget for. You can always afford them.

• Forgiveness: We all have someone in our lives who could do with a nice box of this under the tree. Whatever it is, let it go.

• Apology: It can be painful, but maybe it's time to start budgeting for it.

• Kindness: How about being a little nicer to people you have to be around, people you might previously ignore because they're on the periphery of your life?

• Empathy: Here's where you start giving gifts to people you don't even know - a street bum, some kid in Iraq, even criminals. Just once try seeing them as your brothers and sisters.

http://sltrib.com/lifestyle/ci_3253191

Target and The Salvation Army create charity Web site

Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal

A year after banning The Salvation Army's trademark red kettles from its storefronts, Target Corp. has forged a new partnership with the nonprofit.

Target and The Salvation Army have created The Target/Salvation Army Wish List, a Web site providing essential items for those affected by recent hurricanes, and other less-fortunate individuals and families.

From Nov. 25 to Jan. 25, 2006, visitors to Target.com/salvationarmy can purchase clothing, household items, gift cards and more for donation to families across the country. The Salvation Army will distribute the items.

http://twincities.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/2005/11/14/daily4.html

Hurricane season ends today

San Jose Mercury News

By John Pain, Associated Press

MIAMI - The victims of the busiest and costliest Atlantic hurricane season on record may be comforted now that it's finally ending Wednesday: No hurricane has been known to hit the United States between December and May.

But despite the end of the June 1-to-Nov. 30 season, tens of thousands of Americans are still dealing with the devastation from Hurricanes Wilma, Rita and Katrina, the nation's worst natural disaster in modern times.

Thousands remain homeless along the Gulf Coast, where Katrina hit three months ago. The storm plunged New Orleans into the kind of chaos usually seen in developing countries, exposing the gap between rich and poor, and raising serious doubts about the country's readiness for another catastrophe, caused by man or nature.

Forecasters say 2006 could be another brutal year because the Atlantic is in a period of frenzied hurricane activity that began in 1995 and could last at least another decade.

Government hurricane experts say the increase is due to a natural cycle of higher sea temperatures, lower wind shear and other factors, though some scientists blame global warming.

In 154 years of record-keeping, this year had the most named storms (26, including Tropical Storm Epsilon, which formed Tuesday), the most hurricanes (13), the highest number of major hurricanes hitting the U.S. (4), and the most top-scale Category 5 hurricanes (3).

Katrina was the deadliest U.S. hurricane since 1928 (more than 1,300 dead) and replaced 1992's Andrew as the most expensive one on record ($34.4 billion in insured losses).

The worst damage, of course, was inflicted by Katrina. Miles of coastal Mississippi towns such as Waveland and Gulfport were smashed. Eighty percent of New Orleans was under water after its levees broke. The world saw families stranded on roofs, and hungry and thirsty refugees stuck in the Superdome and Convention Center. Bodies lay on streets for days or floated in the fetid floodwaters. Hundreds of thousands of people have yet to return to their homes - or have no homes to return to.

http://www.mercurynews.com:80/mld/mercurynews/news/13290402.htm

County jail is being sold on eBay

Associated Press

Associated Press

HUNTSVILLE, MO. -- Along with concert tickets, sports memorabilia and designer handbags, add a Missouri jail to the list of things you can buy on eBay.

Randolph County officials have decided to sell their old jail on the auction site as soon as Wednesday. Bidding starts at $32,500, said Jim Myles, a county commissioner.

County leaders say they got the idea to sell the jail from neighboring Howard County, which sold its jail to a Los Angeles lawyer who plans to renovate it into a country getaway.

"After Howard County sold their jail, we were kind of jealous," said Myles. "We wished we had been first."

The two-story structure resembles a quaint home more than a secure lockdown That's because until 1989, the jail doubled as home to the county sheriff and his family, with a separate living quarters including a full kitchen and fireplace. The sheriff's wife even cooked meals for prisoners.

How Katrina Made Me Thankful

Christianity Today

When the deadly hurricane tore me apart from my young son, I reached out to God like never before.

By Stacy Nolan as told to Berta Delgado-Young

I was in a caravan of three cars with two of my children—4-year-old Jeremiah and 1-year-old Ashanti—and 17 other people from our extended family. The goal was to get out of the city. But first, I had to find my youngest child.

My 7-month-old son, A'Mahd, had been staying with his godmother, my friend Nikolle. When it became clear Katrina was definitely coming, I scrambled to contact Nikolle, who lived on the other side of town. I punched her cell phone number repeatedly and heard the same message over and over—"No signal; call again later." We tried to drive to Nikolle's house, but the streets were too jammed with traffic. My heart raced in panic. I have to get to my son!

Suddenly, I faced the most painful decision any mother could imagine: Stay or leave? Wiping the tears from my eyes, I prayed to God that He would keep A'Mahd and Nikolle safe in His hands. I trusted Him to watch over them.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/2005/006/3.00.html

Turning to Bibles for Divine Returns

Yahoo News

More people are turning to the Bible as a safe refuge from a struggling stock market and rising inflation, pouring large sums of cash into rare 1611 King James Bibles, centuries-old Matthew-Tyndale Bible leaves, Hebrew scrolls, prayer books and other ancient liturgical texts.

At Sotheby's Western Manuscripts sale in London in June, a three-volume, 13th century Bible in Latin with prologues attributed to Saint Jerome sold for $1.8 million, while an 11th century Bible sold for $164,081, well above the estimate.

Rare biblical work "is like California coastline real estate — there's a finite quantity of it," says John L. Jeffcoat, Greatsite's owner, who estimates that the value of most rare Bibles appreciates by 15 percent each year, and first editions sometimes rise 25 percent.

"The biggest concern could be the hassle of protecting it," said Mark Ferris, an Old Saybrook, Conn., financial planner. "If you really had a Gutenberg Bible — could you keep it in your house on a stand?"

But as collectibles go, some people swear on the Bible for its steady and stable returns. "There is probably nothing out there that has done better as an investment than rare Bibles," said Tom Cloud, founder of Turamali Inc., a Duluth, Ga., tangible-asset investment manager.

A popular investment — the rare 1611 King James Bible — sold five years ago for $50,000. Now, the same Bible would sell for between $250,000 and $400,000, according to Cloud. Meanwhile, pages from an original Gutenberg Bible are selling for $100,000 to $150,000 a page, almost double what they sold for five years ago, he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051121/ap_on_bi_co_ne/managing_money_bibles_1

Meet Arthur Blessitt: The man who helped George W. find Jesus.

Mother Jones

By Tim Dickinson

There's more than a touch of irony in a story that has George W. Bush being converted by a self-described liberal fundamentalist who in the 1960s was known as the "Minister of Sunset Strip," preaching to Hollywood's hookers and hippies from a free coffeehouse called His Place. In footage from the era, Arthur Blessitt possesses all the gawky grace and comic overearnest intensity of a Will Ferrell character. Then, on Christmas Day in 1969, Blessitt says, he answered a call from Jesus. He lifted the 90-pound cross off of the coffeehouse wall and began his trek across the United States.

Blessitt says he's been turned away from more than half the churches where he's asked to spend the night (though he claims he has never been denied lodging in a bar or nightclub anywhere in the world). Seeing him walk with his giant cross, he says, "people always roll down their windows and say, 'You're a nut!' And I say, 'But at least I'm screwed on the right bolt. How 'bout you!?' "

http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2005/12/prayer_for_w.html

Habitat For Humanity Frames Houses Offsite

Yahoo News, AP

By Elliott Minor, Associated Press Writer

To speed up the recovery, Habitat volunteers around the country have been building house frames that are being shipped to the Gulf Coast, where they'll eventually become homes for hurricane survivors in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

In partnership with NBC's "Today" show and Warner Music Group, volunteers in September worked around the clock to frame 65 homes at New York's Rockefeller Plaza. The effort was nationally televised each morning and featured dozens of celebrities.

Similar house-framing drives have occurred in Jackson, Miss., and Burbank, Calif. A partnership with Major League Baseball also resulted in more homes being framed in Houston during the World Series.

Habitat's latest build took volunteers to the Washington Mall last week, where they planned to assemble another 51 house frames in partnership with Freddie Mac, which assists institutions that grant home mortgages.

Despite the focus on the recent disasters, Habitat affiliates have been able to maintain their normal home-building pace elsewhere in the past year. Worldwide, Habitat volunteers build about 20,000 homes a year, including 5,000 in the United States.

It took 26 years to build 100,000 homes, but only five years to build the second 100,000.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051123/ap_on_re_us/habitat_s_visibility_1

Consider the alternatives to compact discs

San Francisco Chronicle

By Aidin Vaziri, Chronicle Pop Music Critic

The music industry has declared war on its customers. Now it's time to fight back. There's really no reason to buy another compact disc ever again.

Consider the alternatives: Free music available online legally. Online radio. iTunes and other digital music services. Amazon.com free music downloads. Buy tapes and LPs at Goodwill.

And the best of all ... get out and enjoy some live music direct from the source.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/28/CDS.TMP&nl=top

Housing Prices Higher But Sales Are Slowing

San Jose Mercury News

By Pete Carey, Mercury News

Santa Clara County's sizzling housing market cooled a little bit last month, but the median price of a single-family home jumped to a record of $714,250, bucking speculation of a downturn or bursting bubble.

That's a 19 percent increase from October of last year, when the median price was what now seems a modest $600,000.

But sales of single-family homes were nearly 10 percent below last October's, suggesting the continuation of a slow move toward balance in a market that just a few months ago was so hot homes sold almost overnight.

One reason for the slowdown could be mortgage rates. They've been climbing steadily, this week reaching an average 6.37 percent nationally for 30-year fixed loans, the highest level since 2003. That's nearly a percentage point above this year's low of 5.53 percent.

The fall months typically produce slower home sales than the spring and summer, so the slowdown is not entirely unexpected. The median price edged above the previous record of $714,000, set in August, and topped September's median of $705,000.

In the nine-county Bay Area, the median price for a single-family home was up 16.7 percent over last year, to $644,000, but sales were down 6.2 percent. The number of homes sold dropped for the seventh month in a row.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/13200145.htm

Fresno Tackling Poverty

Washington Post

By Evelyn Nieves, Washington Post Staff Writer

Fresno, the largest city in California's expansive Central Valley, may have gleaming new office buildings and an award-winning baseball stadium, but it remains a poor city overwhelmed by need. A short hop from City Hall, people live in slum buildings where roaches crawl in tenants' ears, the black mold looks like wallpaper and families split the rent by sleeping in walk-in closets, laundry rooms and bathtubs.

This city at the heart of the richest farmland in the world has been poor for so long, no one can remember it otherwise. Last month, when the Brookings Institution issued a report that said a higher proportion of poor people in Fresno lived in areas of concentrated poverty than in any other major city in the country -- pre-Katrina New Orleans was number two -- no one here was surprised.

But fighting poverty in Fresno (which ranks 16th among the nation's largest cities in terms of its overall poverty rate) may prove more than daunting. Unlike the other cities the Brookings report found with the most concentrated poverty -- New Orleans, Louisville, Miami and Atlanta -- Fresno is still, in many ways, a farm town. The city's dominant industry, agriculture, depends on a cheap, seasonal work force that keeps renewing itself as successive new waves of immigrants arrive.

Rising rents are sending full-time workers to soup kitchens. Poverello House estimates that 70 percent of the average of 1,200 meals it serves each day are to people with minimum-wage jobs who cannot get by without help.

The Fresno Rescue Mission, which operates the largest homeless shelter in the region, providing 300 beds a night, has found the lines longer at its soup kitchen and the demand for shelter greater than ever. About one quarter of the people who now come to the mission for meals work full time but cannot pay all their bills. "Apartments that were $400 two years ago are now $800 to $900 a month," said the Rev. Larry Arce, director of the mission.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/20/AR2005112001018.
html

Course Casting

Newsweek

By Peg Tyre

This fall, a dozen colleges across the country have introduced a controversial new teaching tool called course casting, aimed at supplementing—and in some cases replacing—large, impersonal lectures. Students at Purdue University have downloaded 40,000 lectures since the start of the semester -- not bad for a school with an enrollment of 38,000. Drexel, Stanford, Duke and American University have begun course-casting programs, too. But critics complain that digital lectures delivered through earphones cut down on the vital interaction between professors and students.

Some academics worry that much is lost when sophomores scroll between audio files of a philosophy lecture and the latest hit by Franz Ferdinand. Students learn an important skill when they are required to show up for a lecture: creating a schedule and sticking to it. Being in class keeps them in regular contact with professors, which, experts say, is a key to keeping dropout rates low. Lectures, too, force students to focus for long, uninterrupted stretches. A topnotch lecture should be provocative, catch you up short and make you think in ways you never have before. Those kinds of intellectual epiphanies rarely happen at the laundromat.

But converts say course casting is an easy way to add a much-needed jolt to the large introductory courses most departments must offer to underclassmen each semester. Weaned on fast-paced music videos and thrill-a-minute game systems, students often complain that 90-minute lectures are mind-numbingly dull. The technology makes it easier for professors to enliven lectures with guest speakers and primary-source material. Some professors actually act more like DJs than Ph.D.s, composing musical intros, adding gong sounds, jokes and other aural cues to emphasize important ideas on the digitalized version of their lectures.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10117475/site/newsweek/

Recovery Is Stagnant In Mississippi Coast Towns

Washington Post

By Michael Powell, Washington Post Staff Writer

PASS CHRISTIAN, Miss. -- Three months ago, Katrina all but scoured this old beach town of 8,000 off the face of the Earth. To walk its streets today is to see acres of wreckage almost as untouched as the day the hurricane passed.

No new houses are framed out. No lots cleared. There is just devastation and a lingering stench and a tent city in which hundreds of residents huddle against the first chill of winter and wonder where they'll find the money to rebuild their lives.

Like New Orleans to the west, hundreds of square miles of Mississippi coastland look little better than they did in early September. At least 200,000 Mississippians remain displaced, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is short at least 13,000 trailers to house them.

Fifty thousand homeowners lack federal flood insurance and cannot rebuild. The unemployment rate has quadrupled, now topping 23 percent in the coastal counties.

The personal shock of it all hasn't subsided. Locals say it's not uncommon to hear perfectly rational people talk of suicide.

Not all the news is grim. Workers in Biloxi have carted away 1 million cubic yards of debris. They have stretched blue tarps over tens of thousands of damaged roofs. Every town along the Gulf Coast has an operating school -- the last one opened in Bay St. Louis on Nov. 6, albeit with only 100 of its original 300 students.

There are twin devastations in Mississippi, and it would take Solomon to pick the worse of the two. There are the coastal cities and there are such places as tiny Pearlington, deep in the woods and marshlands along the Louisiana border. Here a 35-foot-high storm surge roared up the Pearl River.

This is a self-reliant corner of the state, and neighbors sawed and hauled debris -- one even shot a 12-foot alligator lolling in a living room. But the local school remains shredded, its roof a spaghetti of metal beams. Everyone lost cars and trucks, and there's no money for replacements. Many people sleep in tents or shacks that have been roughly thrown together.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/24/AR2005112400796.
html

'Tis the season to be cautious

San Francisco Chronicle

By David Lazarus

Tim Kasser isn't surprised that Americans are once more turning out in droves to spend money they don't have for products they or their loved ones don't need.

Kasser is an associate professor of psychology at Knox College in Illinois who focuses on consumer behavior. Economic conditions might be uncertain, he told me, but most people will be unable to resist the impulse to shop that's cultivated by corporate and political interests.

"We think we're all individualists," he said. "But we're actually being manipulated by the largest and most expensive propaganda system ever developed."

Americans are constantly bombarded with messages promoting a sense that materialism will foster feelings of satisfaction and contentment. "It's always the same: Buy stuff and you'll be happy, buy stuff and you'll be complete," he said. "And it works. People are buying stuff. But studies show that it doesn't really make them feel happy."

Kasser likens our culture's powerful materialism to a drug addiction. Momentary euphoria gives way to feelings of emptiness, and then to a burning need to go out and buy something else.

"Christmas is a time when we're supposed to be celebrating the birth of one of the greatest anti-materialists who ever lived," he observed. "Instead, it's become a time to go out and spend a lot."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/11/25/BUG08FS
09G47.DTL

Buddhism and Science

San Jose Mercury News

"In the Buddhist investigation of reality, at least in principle, empirical evidence should triumph over scriptural authority, no matter how deeply venerated a scripture may be."

-- The Dalai Lama at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience last Saturday.

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2005/11/quoted_10.html

Doing the tango keeps the brain in step, too

USA Today

By Kathleen Fackelmann, USA TODAY

The hot moves of the Argentine Tango not only keep the aging body in shape, they also may help sharpen the aging brain, according to a study out Tuesday.

That study, presented in Washington at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, adds to a growing body of evidence indicating that such challenging leisure activities as dancing may offer a boost in brainpower that could offset the declines that can come with old age.

The tango is a dance that's both fun to do and involves a series of complex moves that can improve balance. A team recruited 30 seniors ages 68 to 91. Half the group got tango lessons, and the other half were assigned to a walking group.

After 10 weeks, the team looked for improvements in brainpower. Both walkers and tango dancers had better scores on memory tests, but only the tango dancers improved on a multitasking test.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2005-11-15-tango_x.htm

FEMA Tells 150,000 in Hotels to Exit In 15 Days

Washington Post

No More Free Rooms For Katrina Evacuees

By Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Federal Emergency Management Agency yesterday warned an estimated 150,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees living in government-subsidized hotels that they have until Dec. 1 to find other housing before it stops paying for their rooms.

The announcement effectively starts the clock ticking toward a new exodus of Gulf Coast storm victims who have been living rent-free in 5,700 hotels in 51 states and U.S. territories under the $273 million program.

Under FEMA's decision, the evacuees will have 15 days to lease apartments, make other arrangements or begin paying their own bills.

Families in 12,338 hotel rooms in Louisiana and Mississippi may get a reprieve. Because of those states' devastated housing stocks, officials may seek extensions of hotel aid two weeks at a time until Jan. 7, at the discretion of the top FEMA official in each state, officials said.

The phaseout of the hotel program marks the latest effort by FEMA to manage the largest national housing crisis since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

"Unless they have some serious plan for helping move people from hotels into apartments ... as of December 1, there's going to be a lot of homeless people," said Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. "It appears that FEMA is working very hard to make itself so unreliable that state and local governments will say, 'We can't depend on FEMA in the future.' I can't imagine what other explanation there can be for this level of incompetence."

Nationwide, the number of Katrina evacuees living in shelters has fallen to 2,491, down from a high of 321,000 shortly after the storm, FEMA said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501704.
html

U.S., Darfur Have Shouting Match

Yahoo News, AP

By Rodrique Ngowi, Associated Press Writer

SHEK EN NIL, Sudan - A senior U.S. envoy got into a shouting match with a Darfur government official Thursday over peacemaking in the restive region of western Sudan.

Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick had just listened to African Union military observers describe a recent outbreak of violence that had turned southern Darfur's Shek en Nil into a ghost village of burned out homes, and heard local leaders profess their commitment to peace.

Regional commissioner Sadiek Abdel Nabi followed as Zoellick stepped away for what was to have been a private additional African Union briefing in the remnants of a village home.

An angry Zoellick ordered Nabi out, saying: "I want to hear a straight story ... and I can't trust your government."

When Nabi refused, Zoellick said he would protest to President Omar el-Bashir.

"I am Bashir here!" Nabi shouted three times in English, standing inches from Zoellick. Nabi previously had relied on an Arab translator.

An AU officer persuaded Nabi to back off, and Zoellick heard details of three attacks on Shek en Nil in late September — all violations of a tattered cease-fire.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051111/ap_on_re_mi_ea/sudan_us

Wrist Slap

World Magazine

SAUDI ARABIA: The Bush administration grants diplomatic waivers to its kingpin Arab ally while evidence of religious oppression grows

by Priya Abraham

In 2004—and again on Nov. 8 this year—the United States named Saudi Arabia one of the worst violators of religious freedom in the world, in an exclusive band of just eight countries. By law, the United States must take action to pressure such "countries of particular concern," which can include sanctions.

Saudi Arabia, however, so far has won a free pass, receiving a six-month waiver on Sept. 30. In the meantime, abuses against minorities remain. The question is whether the Saudis will make systemic reforms in the coming months—and whether the United States will penalize them if they do not.

After the Trafficking in Persons office succeeded in ranking Saudi Arabia as a country doing little to combat rampant slavery, U.S. sanctions or suspended aid could have followed. Instead, the kingdom received a "national interest" waiver.

John Hanford, U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, emphasizes that the Saudis' extension is only 180 days. "We feel like our discussions are productive, unlike discussions with some other countries," he said. "We feel like the government of Saudi Arabia is moving in the right direction. . . . My heart and passion in this is to advance religious freedom as far as we can. And if I feel like some additional time to discuss some important issues may yield some meaningful change, I want to give that a try."

http://www.worldmag.com/subscriber/displayarticle.cfm?id=11273

God, politics and taxes

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Guest Commentary

ON OCT. 31 LAST YEAR, the Sunday before the 2004 presidential election, former Texas legislator Rick Green spoke before 3,500 congregants at the Calvary Chapel, an evangelical church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “Vote for righteousness,” Mr. Green urged, and directed people to voters guides published by the conservative Christian Coalition that were on display in the hallway of the church.

Meanwhile, in St. Paul, Minn., at the Nativity of Our Lord Catholic Church, the Rev. Christopher Wenthe simply declared that love of humanity “must begin with the protection of life, from conception to natural birth.”

Across the country in Pasadena, Calif., at All Saints Episcopal Church, former Rector George F. Regas delivered a guest sermon. He said that “good people of profound faith” could vote for either candidate, but then proceeded to blast Mr. Bush’s policies on Iraq and tax cuts for the wealthy.

Three churches, three sermons. Now one of these churches has been notified by the Internal Revenue Service that it may have its tax-exempt status revoked for intervening in political campaigns and elections.

Guess which one?

Those with suspicious minds will guess that the IRS has political motivations for singling out All Saints, one of Southern California’s largest and most liberal congregations. “It seems ludicrous to suggest that a pastor cannot preach about the value of promoting peace simply because the nation happens to be at war during an election season,” the church’s tax attorney told the L.A. Times.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/editorialcommentary/story/AABF
7A49EAF2C636862570B400532383?OpenDocument

Zondervan Launches New iPod Bible

Publishers Weekly

by Lori Smith, Religion BookLine

In a move being billed as "twenty-first century technology meets a 2,000-year-old book," Zondervan will release a TNIV Bible designed specifically for the iPod in February. The TNIV Audio Bible for iPod will be the first audio Bible available in Apple retail stores. It will also be sold through Christian and general market bookstores and other retail outlets.

The new format will allow users to listen to the audio version, view Bible text on their iPod screen, and link to study notes from the bestselling TNIV Student Bible.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6282442.html

U.S. Cites Top Violators of Religious Liberties

Washington Post

By Alan Cooperman, Washington Post Staff Writer

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice named eight countries yesterday as the world's worst violators of religious liberty and denied that there has been any wavering in the U.S. commitment to global human rights, despite disclosures of secret prisons run by the CIA in Eastern Europe.

The State Department's seventh annual report on religious freedom listed the same eight countries that it did last year as the most egregious violators, or "countries of particular concern." They are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Vietnam.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent, bipartisan panel established by Congress, had recommended adding Uzbekistan to the category of worst abusers because of its mistreatment of Muslims, including the brutal suppression of a demonstration in the city of Andijan in May.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/08/AR2005110801584.
html

Be the one!

Christianity Today

by Ellen Vaughn

In America, we tend to tell our neighbors how thankful we are if we get a great deal on deck furniture or find a big sale on gas grills. We would do well to strip off our sophistication, remember in thanks our own rescue, and get back to the really good news like our brother in Cuba—or that first-century leper whom Jesus healed.

One day about two thousand years ago, Jesus is on the road when ten tattered lepers call to him from afar. They dare not draw nearer.

"Jesus, Master, have pity on us!"

Jesus' heart moves for them. He tells them to go show themselves to the local priest.

Off they go. Faltering but hopeful.

And as they are going, the Scriptures say, they are healed.

Piling to a stop, slamming into one another like clowns at the circus, they stare at each other's faces, mouths wide open. They unwind the rags from their hands, shouting because they have fingers again. They leap into the air; they land, sure-footed. They strip off their bonds and clap their arms around each other's shoulders, laughing with joy. They can't wait to find their families. They sprint toward town.

But one whirls and turns in the other direction, back toward Jesus. He runs fast with his new feet. Weeping, he falls and kisses Jesus' perfect ones.

"Thank you!" he sobs.

Thank you. Thank you.

Ten were rescued, cleansed, given a brand-new beginning. Yet nine ran the wrong way. Only one ran for home base, where Jesus was.

Friends of ours have a family mantra. "Be the one!" they tell their kids and each other. "Be the one who thanks Jesus. Let others go where they may. You be the one who is grateful."

Be the one!

Some believers seem to be looking for life principles that are just a little more spiritually sexy. Be thankful? Oh, of course. But give me something more exciting, more dramatic, something remarkable that I can do to change my life.

Developing the meditative habit of constantly whispering thanks to him—no matter the situation—is, in fact, a mustard seed of life-changing power. Radical, for it goes to the root of who we are. Small, seemingly insignificant, yet it has the power to change our lives and blow our socks off, right in the midst of the everyday. When we really give God thanks in everything, we are acknowledging that he is sovereign and that we trust him. And we find that it changes us.

Truly grateful people can't be stopped. They bubble and overflow, refreshing others. Their habitual gratitude serves as a springboard to give a reason for the buoyant hope bouncing within them. They attract those who are stuck in the cares of this world and woo them to the eternal good.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/011/26.46.html

Cat Show Plans Memorial Service for Dog

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

By Jim Fitzgerald, Associated Press Writer

This will probably be the first time a dog's memorial service is attended by 300 cats. A schnauzer-Siberian husky mix named Ginny will be eulogized Nov. 19 at the Westchester Cat Show, where she was named Cat of the Year in 1998 for her uncanny skill and bravery in finding and rescuing endangered tabbies.

Ginny died in August at age 17, after a long career as a one-dog rescue party for cats on Long Island's South Shore. The club says she saved hundreds of cats who were abandoned, injured or in harm's way.

Among the best-known rescues is the time Ginny threw herself against a vertical pipe at a construction site to topple it and reveal the kittens trapped inside. She once ignored the cuts on her paws as she dug through a box full of broken glass to find an injured cat inside.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/11/10/national/a11540
3S60.DTL

The Real New Orleans

Washington Post

By Peter Slevin and Peter Whoriskey, Washington Post Staff Writers

The litany of problems faced by New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is unmatched by any other U.S. city in recent history. Billions of dollars in public and private funds are going to be spent on rebuilding New Orleans, but those efforts could be undermined by forces that have long beset the city -- a tradition of corruption and dysfunction and a weak economy that clouded New Orleans's future years before the rains began in August.

"Always broke. Worst school system in the state. Highest crime rate in the nation. Shrinking population. All the corporations have moved out," said Bernie Pinsonat, a political analyst in Baton Rouge. "Any poll I do, the rest of Louisiana thinks, 'New Orleans is a deep, dark hole, and no matter how much money we send, it doesn't seem to get better.' "

In a recent Louisiana State University poll of 419 business executives, corruption was ranked among the worst aspects of doing business in Louisiana. Investors and managers elsewhere are reluctant to come "because they don't want to pay the corruption tax," said Rafael C. Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission.

"We've seen every type of corruption imaginable," said U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, whose office indicted 44 public officials in the past fiscal year alone. He pointed to skimming, bribery and shakedowns across a spectrum of government employment: judges, police, teachers, administrators and traffic court workers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/09/AR2005110902311.
html

Upon the cross, an iPod cleaves

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Scott Wilson invented the iBelieve --- an attachment that turns an iPod Shuffle into a cross that can be worn around your neck --- as a comment on how we worship consumer products. The iBelieve, he felt, was "a social commentary on the fastest growing religion on the planet" --- meaning iPod-mania.

Rather than take offense, however, Christians have embraced the new gizmo. He says he has been deluged with orders from people who wanted to buy one ($12.95, 10 percent of which goes to charity, at www.devoted1.com), as well as e-mails from churches and media.

http://www.ajc.com/living/content/epaper/editions/saturday/faith_values_34c602ea
801f60100092.html?COXnetJSessionIDbuild103=DvvTfr68lr4BxkInRJ86vuOBb9zyBqePuiwjRcEnghRYgyezpsye!-1120072298&UrAuth=aN%60NUOcN%5BUbTTUWUXUTUZTZU%60UWUbUWUZUbU%5EUcTYWVVZV&u

In Quiet Protest

San Francisco Chronicle

By Tom Lanham

For fans of this composer's typically vitriolic invective, a nonvocal set might come as a shock. As far back as 1984's Central America-themed "If I Had a Rocket Launcher," Canadian folk firebrand Bruce Cockburn has railed against social and political injustices, often visiting the foreign lands he sings about to more fully empathize with their problems. It's difficult for anyone to keep this Canuck quiet.

Within five minutes of discussing his new instrumental anthology "Speechless," Cockburn's muzzle unstraps, and his powder keg of leftist opinions explodes.

"I've seen reviews of my albums that say, 'Too much political bull -- . What does this guy know? He's just an artist.' Like somehow journalists are the only people who are qualified to write about politics."

Years ago, Cockburn growls, he was trying to warn listeners via songs like "Gospel of Bondage" about the encroachment of evangelical Christianity. "It was totally clear to me then, even though Pat Robertson had not yet said, 'Go out and kill that Venezuelan head of state because he's an annoyance.' But he had said equally ludicrous and equally un-Christian things over and over again, and people were still respecting him as this Christian leader."

Cockburn used to deem himself a devout Christian, too -- much of his earlier work is suffused with spirituality. He's no longer affiliated with any one church, he says, thanks to "my understanding of spirituality being added to that, a lot of things that didn't come from Christian sources."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/06/PKGTNFEMBQ1.DTL&type=mus
ic

Evolution Slate Outpolls Rivals

New York Times

By Laurie Goodstein

All eight members up for re-election to the Pennsylvania school board that had been sued for introducing the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in biology class were swept out of office yesterday by a slate of challengers who campaigned against the intelligent design policy.

The election results were a repudiation of the first school district in the nation to order the introduction of intelligent design in a science class curriculum. The policy was the subject of a trial in Federal District Court that ended last Friday. A verdict by Judge John E. Jones III is expected by early January.

"I think voters were tired of the trial, they were tired of intelligent design, they were tired of everything that this school board brought about," said Bernadette Reinking, who was among the winners.

The school board voted in October 2004 to require ninth grade biology students to hear a brief statement at the start of the semester saying that there were "gaps" in the theory of evolution, [and] that intelligent design was an alternative.

The board was sued by 11 Dover parents who contended that intelligent design was religious creationism in new packaging, and that the board was trying to impose its religion on students.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/national/09dover.html

Frankenstein vs Dracula

Scotland Sunday Herald

By Jenifer Johnston

Their fictional alter-egos have terrified and entertained for more than 100 years, but new evidence unearthed by a leading historian suggests that the real-life Dracula and Frankenstein crossed paths centuries ago and fought a bloody battle to the death.

In a collapsed, moss-covered crypt in St Mary’s Evangelical church in the Romanian town of Sibiu lie the earthly remains of Frank Baron von Frankenstein where he was buried following his execution by Vlad Dracula the Impaler in the early 15th century.

The discovery, by celebrated historian and Sunday Herald correspondent Gabriel Ronay, establishes an extraordinary historical connection between the real-life inspirations for two of the literary world’s most loved creations.

Count Dracula was modelled on Vlad Dracula the Impaler, an exceptionally cruel 15th century warlord, whom author Bram Stoker endowed with fictional, vampire traits to suit the British taste for the supernatural.

Frankenstein, as imagined in Mary Shelley’s novel, was named after the ancient German noble family of von Frankenstein. The von Frankensteins’ ancestral hill-top chateau, built near the Rhine, had deeply impressed Mary and Percy Shelley during their first romantic journey there in 1816.

http://www.sundayherald.com/52589

Copernicus' Grave Found in Polish Church

Yahoo News

WARSAW, Poland - Polish archeologists believe they have located the grave of 16th-century astronomer and solar-system proponent Nicolaus Copernicus in a Polish church, one of the scientists announced Thursday.

Copernicus, who died in 1543 at 70 after challenging the ancient belief that the sun revolved around the earth, was buried at the Roman Catholic cathedral in the city of Frombork, 180 miles north of the capital, Warsaw.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051103/ap_on_re_eu/poland_copernicus

Also:

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051107/full/051107-3.html

Terminator vs. Gerrymander

New York Times

By Jill Stewart

In seeking to have a panel of retired judges take over drawing electoral districts, the governor is clearly looking out for the voters' best interests.

Honest observers on the left and right have long complained that California's voting district map is a masterwork of cynicism that assures victories for incumbents as well as party hacks seeking open seats. The fix is so complete that in 2004 not one of the 173 state legislative and Congressional seats being contested in California changed party hands. Robert Stern, president of the liberal-leaning Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, told me that California's elections are "less democratic than the Soviet Politburo."

Democrats, led by Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, have aggressively tried to paint Proposition 77 as a power grab by shady retired judges and the Republicans. The fact is, to maintain the undemocratic system that now exists, the Democrats need to distract voters from the truth: that Proposition 77 is a series of fair-minded steps that assures elected leaders reasonable input in creating the panel of judges, none of whom are running for office in the voting districts they fashion.

Unfortunately, the governor is not just up against the Democrats. Many Republicans are also fighting him. After all, the "fix" also guarantees elected Republicans their automatic re-elections.

These dishonest voting districts slash across communities of interest and geography. One State Assembly district sprawls from the upscale Westside area of Los Angeles, across some mountains, to the farms of Oxnard. One Congressional district looks like a noodle draped along the coast, so skinny it is jokingly said to disappear beneath the waves of the Pacific at high tide.

Once voters are herded, by party, into these trumped-up districts, the parties feed them an incumbent or pre-selected party crony. And they are getting sick of it.

They have to realize that in the long run, this isn't about Arnold Schwarzenegger; it's about California's long-ruling Democrats, who have decided democracy is no longer part of their agenda.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/07/opinion/07stewart.html

After 34 Years, His Antiwar Song Is Still Not Out of Style

New York Times

By Andrew C. Revkin

In 1971, with Australia embroiled in Vietnam alongside the United States, Eric Bogle sat down to write what would become one of the most admired songs about war: "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda."

"I wanted to write an antiwar song but didn't want to denigrate the courage of the soldier," Mr. Bogle recalled in an interview on Wednesday before a show at the Manhattan nightclub Satalla. "There was too much of that 'baby killer' stuff going on."

Now 61, he is the archetypal touring folk singer, burly and balding and bearded, with a remarkably similar-looking sideman, John Munro, and a repertory ranging from wrenching to raunchy.

But at every stop, the audiences, many having grown gray along with Mr. Bogle, await the tune he wrote 34 years ago.

The song is in the voice of an innocent rural lad who joined the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, or Anzac, in 1915, was handed a tin hat and a gun and was shipped with 17,000 others to the killing shores of Suvla Bay, where they were "butchered like lambs at the slaughter." The refrain recounts how at every turn - when troops were dispatched, when the maimed came home, when the dead were buried, when the dying veterans marched - some martial band played "Waltzing Matilda," the unofficial Australian anthem.

The song, almost independent of Mr. Bogle's career as a folk performer, took on its own life as an antiwar standard. In a telephone interview from his home in Beacon, N.Y., Pete Seeger called it "one of the world's greatest songs."

Mr. Bogle's songbook is as variegated as folk music itself (details are at ericbogle.net). Songs range from a searing account of an apartheid prison hanging to a satirical romp on the nasal style of Bob Dylan and audiences' persistent habit of asking Mr. Bogle to play a Dylan song. (He doesn't play any.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/05/arts/music/05folk.html

US Post Office Releases New Stamps Featuring Latin Dances

September 17, 2005

The US post office has released a set of dance stamps that include Merengue, Salsa, Cha Cha, & Mambo. On the back paper of the stamps is also included a brief factoid in both English & Spanish.

Kicking off National Hispanic Heritage month, Sept. 15-Oct. 15, the U.S. Postal Service dedicated the Let's DanceBailemos stamps which brings to life four sassy Latin dances. The 37-cent Let's DanceBailemos commemorative stamps are available nationwide today.

"At the Postal Service, we understand the power our stamps have in helping to celebrate American history and culture - in this case, the contributions of Latin American art and dance to American culture," said David L. Solomon, Vice President, Area Operations, New York Metro, U.S. Postal Service, who dedicated the stamps in New York.

"Now, people all around the country will be able to sway to the left and right, and accent their mail and packages with these high energy stamps that capture the enthusiasm of dancers moving to the beat," said Anita Bizzotto, Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President, U.S. Postal Service, who dedicated the stamps in Miami.

http://www.usps.com/communications/news/stamps/2005/sr05_043.htm

Congatulation, You're "Way Retro"

In secondhand store, woman finds prom dress she made 33 years ago

Associated Press

HARRISON, Ark.

Marlene Wyatt went to a secondhand store to buy a Halloween costume last week. What she found could be just as scary: the prom dress she had made 33 years ago.

"I thought, this material looks familiar," Wyatt said. "Then I thought, 'Surely not' and finally, 'That's my dress!'"

Melissa Martin, proprietor of the Fashion Exchange, said she knew something special had happened because of the look on Wyatt's face.

"This is amazing," she said. "What are the odds of something like this happening?"

Wyatt, from Yellville, sewed the white double-knit polyester dress when she was in high school.

"We come from a large family, 12 kids," she said. "There were five girls at home at the time, so sewing my own clothes was helpful, but I always loved doing it." Wyatt said the dress has one of the first invisible zippers she ever sewed.

Martin opened the Fashion Exchange about a month ago. She doesn't remember where she got the dress, which she had labeled "Way Retro" in her inventory.

Wyatt now has it in her sewing room.

Microwaves proven to cause brain damage

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

Women Brawl Over Using Microwave

TAMARAC, Fla. (AP)

A Walgreens employee allegedly stabbed a co-worker in an argument over who could microwave her soup first, authorities said.

Both women wanted to use the microwave in the employee break room Wednesday afternoon, according to the Broward County Sheriff's Office.

While they were fighting over who could use the microwave first, Mellesia Grant grabbed a large kitchen knife off the counter and stabbed Merloze Tilme in the abdomen, the sheriff's office said.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/10/14/national/a133621D07.DTL

Church Agrees to Ban Swallowing Goldfish

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

Florence, Ala. (AP)

The First Assembly of God Church has agreed to discontinue its practice of swallowing live goldfish as part of its Fear Factor ministry.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has asked for a ban on the practice.

As part of the Fear Factor ministry at the church, teenage participants were asked to swallow live goldfish. No one reportedly became ill during the goldfish phase of the program that concludes this week.

Youth minister Anthony Martin said earlier the goal of the exercise was to teach teens about fear.

PETA thanked the church for the ban by sending a gift basket of vegan Swedish fish, a gummy candy, as an alternative to live fish.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/10/26/national/a173637D29.DTL

Please don't drink and fly

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

Superman Hospitalized After Leap

GRAZ, Austria

A man who claimed he was Superman and could fly was hospitalized early Tuesday after leaping from a fourth-floor window, authorities said.

They said the man — who apparently had drunk several bottles of red wine before attempting the jump — appeared at the window ledge at around 4 a.m. and shouted: "I am Superman! Nothing can happen to me!"

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/10/25/international/i183634D23
.DTL

Are religious societies better than secular ones?

AlterNet

By George Monbiot, AlterNet

Christian fundamentalists claim religion is associated with lower rates of violence, teen pregnancy and divorce. A new study says they couldn't be more wrong.

We know that the most dangerous human trait is an absence of self-doubt, and that self-doubt is more likely to be absent from the mind of the believer than the non-religious infidel.

But it is hard to dismiss Dostoyevsky's suspicion that "If God does not exist, then everything is permissible." If our lives have no purpose, why should we care about other people's?

In the current edition of the Journal of Religion and Society, a researcher called Gregory Paul tests the hypothesis propounded by evangelists in the Bush administration, that religion is associated with lower rates of "lethal violence, suicide, non-monogamous sexual activity and abortion." He compared data from 18 developed democracies, and discovered that the Christian fundamentalists couldn't have got it more wrong.

"In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion ... None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction."

Within the United States "the strongly theistic, anti-evolution South and Midwest" have "markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the Northeast where ... secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms."

Strangest of all for those who believe that Christian societies are "pro-life" is the finding that "increasing adolescent abortion rates show positive correlation with increasing belief and worship of a creator ... Claims that secular cultures aggravate abortion rates (John Paul II) are therefore contradicted by the quantitative data."

The rich countries in which sexual abstinence campaigns, generally inspired by religious belief, are strongest have the highest early pregnancy rates. The U.S. is the only rich nation with teenage pregnancy levels comparable to those of developing nations: it has a worse record than India, the Philippines and Rwanda. Because they're poorly educated about sex and in denial about what they're doing (and so less likely to use contraceptives), boys who participate in abstinence programmes are more likely to get their partners pregnant than those who don't.

If we are to accept the findings of this one -- and so far only -- wide survey of belief and human welfare, the message to those who claim in any sense to be pro-life is unequivocal. If you want people to behave as Christians advocate, you should tell them that God does not exist.

http://www.alternet.org/story/26721/

Hip-hop ministry

San Jose Mercury News

By Glenn Lovell, Mercury News

A popular fixture on the local scene since February, The Firehouse has become a safe haven for "all young people at risk," explains San Jose pastor-activist Sonny Lara. "We're an alternative to the thug life, man. When they come here, they don't need to stand with their guard up; they can relax . . . be themselves."

The free, non-denominational nightspot meets the last Friday of each month at the old Oasis disco or, if that's taken, the St. James Community Center down the street. The club has been hailed by San Jose Recreation Superintendent Angel Rios Jr. as "cutting edge" and "a positive alternative" for kids who are confused or have lost their way.

Pastor Lara rents the St. James Street club from downtown developer Barry Swenson for a token $375 or "as close to that as we can come." He calls The Firehouse "neutral ground," a place where different religions and ethnicities can mingle without fear of the kind of gun violence that erupted Saturday morning outside the Ambassador Lounge on San Pedro Street.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/12990615.htm

New England braces for Wilma, nor'easter

San Jose Mercury News

By Brooke Donald, Associated Press

The remnants of Hurricane Wilma plus a nasty nor'easter began kicking up high winds, heavy rains and coastal flooding Tuesday across New England, a region already saturated by days of rain.

The storm may produce 20-foot seas and a 3-foot storm surge, causing minor to moderate coastal flooding during high tide late Tuesday. A coastal flood warning was in effect through the evening.

The weather service also issued a winter storm watch for the Berkshires beginning Tuesday evening, with the potential for up to seven inches of snow at elevations above 1,500 feet. The expected wet, heavy snow, could bring down tree limbs and power lines.

http://www.mercurynews.com:80/mld/mercurynews/news/12991505.htm

Mark says: I hope everyone got into and home from the Berkshires dance safely.

Cowboy church rounds 'em up

Orlando Sentinel

by Mark I. Pinsky, Sentinel Staff Writer

The Rev. Gene Blankenship Jr. pulls up to the Kissimmee Valley Livestock Show building in Osceola Heritage Park every first and third Thursday evening of the month to preside at the Cowboy Church of Central Florida.

The cowboy ministry, which is supported by New Hope Southern Baptist Church in St. Cloud, began six weeks ago, after several years of planning. Blankenship says he feels called to "outside evangelism" -- nontraditional approaches to saving souls. He heard about cowboy churches in the West and Midwest, and thought the concept might work in Central Florida, with its long tradition of "cracker cowboys."

"Our goal is to reach those who enjoy the Western culture with the gospel of Christ, whether they're a working cowboy or a cowboy at heart," says Blankenship, 43, whose day job is running an audio-production company.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/orl-view1705oct17,0,4749708.story?c
oll=orl-home-entlife

Theology On Tap

San Francisco Chronicle

A priest walks into a bar -- and serves up some theology

by Marianne Costantinou

Not all is typical on this Tuesday night at Ireland's 32, one of the city's most popular bars, on Geary Boulevard in the Richmond District. On one side of the bar, about two dozen folks are gathered round, and while most are nursing beers, they're wearing name tags and speaking softly when they're speaking at all. But mostly they're just listening to two speakers. The crowd is made up of young people in their 20s and 30s. The speakers are old enough to be their mothers -- if they didn't happen to be nuns.

This is "Theology on Tap," a national series of seminars run in bars and restaurants by the Catholic Church. The program began 25 years ago in the Archdiocese of Chicago as a way to reach out to young people who either didn't attend church regularly or had questions that they didn't feel comfortable discussing on church grounds. Today, parishes in at least 30 cities host the seminars. In San Francisco, they're run by the archdiocese's Office of Young Adult Ministry and the University of San Francisco's Lane Center for Catholic Studies and Social Thought.

"This is where Jesus would be, with the people," said Mary Criscione, a lecturer at St. Patrick's Seminary and at Santa Clara University.

"You always get in debates in a pub. Heck, this pub would traditionally have political discussions," Eileen Salinas added, pointing to the bar's ceiling, covered with protest signs championing the Irish Republican Army. "Why not have a theological discussion?"

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/20/THEOLOGY.TMP&nl=top

Obituary

Died: Oswald C.J. Hoffmann, voice of "The Lutheran Hour" radio show from 1955 to 1988, on September 8 in St. Louis after a brief illness. He was 91. Hoffmann represented the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod at the Second Vatican Council and served as North American chairman for the 1974 World Congress on Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland. He served on the board of Christianity Today International from 1981 to 2000.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/011/7.22.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/national/18hoffmann.html

http://www.lhm.org/lhmint/estorypreview.asp?articleid=4146

(He was the father of Paul Hoffmann, who serves at Holy Cross Lutheran Church of Los Gatos, California, the church where I grew up in the late 60's and early 70's. -- Mark)

Latest numbers signal softening of red-hot home market

San Jose Mercury News

By Margaret Steen, Mercury News

The median house price in Santa Clara County dropped to $705,000 in September amid signs this month that Silicon Valley's red-hot real estate market is cooling.

New data available Tuesday also shows it's taking longer to sell homes. At the beginning of the year, it would have taken 28 days to sell all the homes on the market in the county, given the pace of sales then. It would take more than 54 days today.

The median price of a single-family resale home in Santa Clara County dipped in September to $705,000 from a record $714,000 in August, according to DataQuick. The median price of a condo was $480,000, up 23.7 percent from a year earlier but down from $490,000 in August.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/classifieds/real_estate/12939758.htm

Abolishing the Poll Tax Again

New York Times Editorial

Critics of Georgia's new voter-identification law, which forces many citizens to pay $20 or more for the documentation necessary to vote, have called it a modern-day poll tax, intended to keep blacks and poor people from voting. A federal judge supported these claims yesterday and blocked the law from taking effect. Instead of continuing to defend the statute in court, Georgia should remove this throwback to the days of Jim Crow from its lawbooks.

Under the new law, voters with driver's licenses were not inconvenienced. But it put up huge obstacles for voters without licenses, who are disproportionately poor and black. Most of them would have to get official state picture-identification cards and pay processing fees of $20 or more. Incredibly - beyond the cost imposed on such voters - there was not a single office in Atlanta where the identification cards were for sale.

Republicans claimed the law was intended to prevent fraud, but that was just a pretext. According to Georgia's secretary of state, Cathy Cox, in recent years there have been no documented cases of fraud through voter impersonation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/opinion/19wed2.html?th&emc=th

Silence on Suffering

Christianity Today guest opinion

Where are the voices from the Christian community on cruel and degrading treatment of detainees?

by Gary A. Haugen

President Bush faces a defining question of morality on which he has yet to receive any discernible guidance from the faith-based coalition that helped put him in office. The question: whether it is ever right for Americans to inflict cruel and degrading treatment on suspected terrorist detainees.

We read credible reports—some from FBI agents—that prisoners have been stripped naked, sexually humiliated, chained to the floor, and left to defecate on themselves. These and other practices like "waterboarding" (in which a detainee is made to feel as if he is being drowned) may or may not meet the technical definition of torture, but no one denies that these practices are cruel, inhuman, and degrading.

Today, the practical application of that question is whether the President should fight the efforts of a group of Republican senators, led by John McCain, who has introduced amendments to a defense bill that would outlaw such abuse. Two weeks ago, the Senate passed the McCain amendment, but whether it is put into place will be determined by the conference committee charged with resolving differences between the Senate and House defense bills.

Recent survey results from the Pew Research Center indicated that, in rating the importance of Supreme Court issues, the treatment of terrorist detainees is a close second only to abortion on the list of concerns of evangelical and Catholic voters. Where, then, are the robust voices of theological reflection and moral reasoning that we have come to expect in these debates?

While the President may have ruled out torture, the administration is currently reserving the right to treat some of its detainees with "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment." The U.S. government is a signatory to an international treaty that bars such treatment, but the administration has maintained that such standards only apply to detainees held on U.S. soil. In fact, since April 16, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has explicitly authorized interrogation techniques that constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

How ought the President, as a man of faith and moral conviction, think through the ethical questions posed by these practices? In shaping practical answers, the President should be able to draw upon the serious theological reflections of leaders from his religious base.

Gary A. Haugen is President of International Justice Mission (IJM), a human rights agency that rescues victims of illegal detention, sexual exploitation, slavery, and oppression around the world.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/142/12.0.html

Estonians Break Ground, Vote Online

Washington Post

By Jari Tanner, The Associated Press

TALLINN, Estonia -- This tiny former Soviet republic nicknamed "e-Stonia" because of its tech-savvy population is breaking new ground in digital democracy. This week, Estonia became the first country in the world to hold an election allowing voters nationwide to cast ballots over the Internet.

Thousands of people voted online in Democratic primaries in Arizona in 2000 and Michigan in 2004. The city of Geneva, Switzerland, has held several online referendums, the first in January 2003. But Estonia is the first to extend it to voters nationwide, experts said.

Estonia has the most advanced information infrastructure of any formerly communist eastern European state. It gave the Linux-based voting system a trial run in January, when about 600 people voted online in a referendum in the capital, Tallinn. The plan is to allow online voting in the next parliamentary elections in 2007.

To cast an online ballot, voters need a special ID card, a $24 device that reads the card and a computer with Internet access. Some 80 percent of Estonian voters have the ID cards, which have been used since 2002 for online access to bank accounts and tax records.

In the United States, the Pentagon canceled an Internet voting plan for military and overseas citizens in 2004 because of security concerns. Plans for large-scale voting in Britain have also been dropped.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/14/AR2005101400737.
html

Mortgage deduction on block?

San Francisco Chronicle

by Kathleen Pender

President Bush's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform is likely to propose next week a change in the deduction for home-mortgage interest that, if adopted by Congress, would have a drastic impact on the Bay Area and other regions with high housing prices.

Today, a married couple filing jointly can deduct interest on up to $1 million in mortgage debt. In a meeting Tuesday, the panel agreed to recommend lowering that limit, perhaps to the maximum mortgage that can be guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration. The FHA limit varies by region, but in the Bay Area and most of coastal California is $312,895.

Such a plan is not likely to pass Congress, but it could spark interest in changing the hallowed mortgage-interest deduction.

"I think it's dead on arrival," says Ken Rosen, professor of real estate and urban economics at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. "It's very biased against California and New York and favorable to Texas." The FHA loan limit throughout Texas is $172,632. That's more than enough to buy a median-priced home in Houston ($142,500) or Dallas ($149,100), according to the Realtors Association.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/10/13/BUG8VF7
E901.DTL

The Internet didn't kill the library card

San Francisco Chronicle

By C.W. Nevius

In the past five years, despite the overwhelming presence of the Internet, libraries are experiencing record attendance.

The new library is a sprawling, open, friendly place where people go to surf the Web on a Wi-Fi connection, sip a latte and check out a movie. There are still books, of course, but nationally the most popular items to be checked out of libraries are DVDs.

New libraries like Santa Clara's Central Park or Livermore's new Civic Center Library have gathering rooms for groups, coffee shops and loads of computers.

And the Internet? It turns out to be the library's best friend. Visitors use the library computers, and seniors come to learn computer skills in workshops and classes. So was everyone wrong about the threat of the Internet? Wouldn't be the first time.

Librarian Cindy Brittain keeps a copy of a news story at her desk. It details the concern that television is going to be the end of libraries. It is dated 1953.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/04/NEVIUS.TMP

Christian rockers risk wrath of DMCA with DRM tips

The Register

By Team Register

The bassist of Switchfoot is teaching fans how to disable the copy protection measures in the San Diego rock band's own CDs, presumably upsetting Sony and perhaps unwittingly testing the anti-circumvention rules of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Tim Foreman, brother of lead singer Jon, has taken exception to the Digital Rights Management software that appears on the platinum-selling Christian band's latest release, Nothing Is Sound.

"My heart is heavy with this whole copy-protection thing," he wrote on the band's website last week after it came to his attention that fans were having problems importing the band's latest songs from CD to iTunes. So he posted full instructions for disabling the DRM that accompanies the CD, including a link to an open source program that helps to rip CDs.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/21/christian_rockers_drm_tips/

http://www.switchfoot.com/

Religious scholar Huston Smith talks about Christianity and why religion matters today

San Francisco Chronicle

You grew up in China, where your parents were Methodist missionaries. How did that affect your spiritual life?

Well, you know, I grew up in a functional nuclear family. We were the only Americans in our area. So, I absorbed [my faith], as the Romans used to say, cum lacte, with the mother's milk.

William James makes an important distinction between "the once-born" and "the twice-born." And I'm the once-born, because I just grew up with this religion. I can't say it was in my genes. No. But it was in my nurturance from the very beginning, so it's hard to target a moment when I first became aware of it.

One of the many hot-button issues dividing scientists and religious people is the debate over evolution and so-called intelligent design. What's your take on this controversy?

Science has given us the fossil record, which shows that it took three and a half billion years for life to evolve to our level. The writer George Will -- I don't agree with his politics, but he said something that was right on. He said that six-day creationism is not only nonsense -- it's nonsense on stilts!

However, you are never going to explain in a laboratory what it is we call the divine spark, which every religion has described. You will never get a sense of our divinity, of the image of God. These things cannot be explained by natural selection or chance mutations. For that you need to turn to religion.

You've written that politicians, particularly those on the far right, have hijacked Christianity for their own means. Why do you think that's happening now?

Honestly, I think it has something to do with greed. You can cushion it any way you want, but the present administration is guilty of rewarding greed with all of its tax rebates and so on.

Genuine religion is about generosity. And greed, when it takes over -- and I speak metaphorically here -- is an indication that we have fallen into the temptation of the devil. The devil wants us to be greedy.

Many people today feel disconnected from organized religion. So they're going their own way, blazing their own spiritual paths. What do you think about that trend?

It's probably better than nothing, but not much. Another phrase for it is "cafeteria-style spirituality." You go to the cafeteria, and normally most people choose what they like.

Do they choose what is good for them? Do they put that above what they like? Well, most people do not. There is also a problem that often we don't know what is good for us.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/archive/2005/09/19/findrelig.DTL

Groom, Family Jailed After Melee

AP

New York

A groom spent his wedding night in jail with his father, his brother his father-in-law and seven other members of his wedding party after the group allegedly brawled with another bridal party and police, according to a published report.

The altercation reportedly began with a case of mistaken identity. A member of the second wedding party confronted Fortunato's best man, believing him to be a wedding photographer, who had absconded. The best man allegedly responded with force sparking a bench-clearer.

"Everybody's fighting everybody," White Plains police spokesman Martin Gleeson told the Daily News. "And both brides are kind of walking around helpless like, 'This is my wedding? I can't believe this is happening!'"

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/09/15/national/a130601D19.DTL

They just want to talk on the phone

USA Today

By Michelle Kessler, USA TODAY

"People are not really flocking to phones with new features," says David Chamberlain, a mobile phone analyst with In-Stat. "They just want to talk on the phone."

A recent In-Stat survey showed relatively little interest in new phone add-ons, such as video. Since most people upgrade their phone about every two years, they're looking for an easy-to-use device — not a pricey all-in-one, equity analyst Albert Lin says.

Still, cell phone companies persist with fancy phones.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2005-09-05-multipurpose-cell
-phones_x.htm

WWJD?

God Behind Barbed Wire

Christianity Today

by Philip Yancey

Jürgen Moltmann was planning on a career in quantum physics until he was drafted at age 18 at the height of the Second World War. Assigned to anti-aircraft batteries in Hamburg, he saw compatriots incinerated in the fire-bombings there. The question "Why did I survive?" haunted him.

Moltmann felt an inconsolable grief about life, "weighed down by the somber burden of a guilt which could never be paid off."

After surrendering to the British, the young soldier spent the next three years in prison camps in Belgium, Scotland, and England. An American chaplain gave him an Army-issue New Testament and Psalms. "If I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there." As he read on, Moltmann found words that perfectly captured his feelings of desolation. He became convinced that God "was present even behind the barbed wire — no, most of all behind the barbed wire."

Upon release, Moltmann began to articulate his theology of hope. Through all of Moltmann's dense theological works run two themes: God's presence with us in our suffering and God's promise of a perfected future. If Jesus had lived in Europe during the Third Reich, Moltmann noted, he likely would have been branded like other Jews and shipped to the gas chambers. In Jesus, we have definitive proof that God suffers with us, as Moltmann explains in The Crucified God.

"God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh with him."

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/009/20.120.html

Mother Teresa: The joy of serving God

Christianity Today

by Ruth A. Tucker

Mother Teresa of Calcutta was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Albania in 1910. Her father was a businessman whose death when she was 9 years old left the family in difficult financial circumstances. But their faith sustained them. With her mother and brother and sister, Agnes attended church every day, and she sang in the church choir. Her widowed mother, though nearly destitute herself, volunteered in the neighborhood, caring for an invalid alcoholic woman and later taking six orphaned children into her own home. It was a model of servanthood that did not go unnoticed by young Agnes.

At age 12, Agnes sensed God calling her to his service, but she struggled with how she could know for certain. She prayed and talked with her mother and sister, but she had no real peace. Then she talked with her Father confessor. "How can I be sure?" she asked. He answered, "Through your joy. If you feel really happy by the idea that God might call you to serve him, then this is the evidence that you have a call. The deep inner joy that you feel is the compass that indicates your direction in life."

"By blood and origin, I am all Albanian.
My citizenship is Indian. I am a Catholic nun.
As to my calling, I belong to the whole world.
As to my heart, I belong entirely to Jesus." — Mother Teresa

http://www.ctlibrary.com/4397

Why Men Hate Going to Church

Mississippi Clarion-Ledger

By Jean Gordon

Men lead most Christian churches, but observers agree it's the women who dominate the flocks. Though theories about the church gender gap have longed blamed men for their spiritual apathy, a new book finds another force driving men away from church: the church itself.

"The church is like a white cake with chocolate frosting," said David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going to Church (Nelson Books, $13.99). "If you look at the icing, it's male dominated. But if you plunge below, it's feminine all the way."

With its easy listening music, pastel-hued decor and an emphasis on comfort and nurturing, Murrow said modern church culture fails men craving a challenge.

A man's project-oriented, outdoorsy nature is not conducive to passively sitting through a worship service or volunteering to lead a children's ministry.

And beyond excuses ranging from boredom to lack of time to an aversion to being asked for money, Murrow said men stay away from church because their skeptical natures resist taking a leap of faith.

"Men like to question and answer and give and take," he said. "The church's style of lecturing is not as conducive to spiritual growth."

Churches that do the best job of attracting men, Murrow said, are mission-focused evangelical congregations.

"There's an element of risk there," he said. "It's more risky to go on a foreign mission trip than to volunteer at a soup kitchen."

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050821/FEAT05/50821031
1/1023

Scientists Speak Up on Mix of God and Science

New York Times

Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?

Disdain for religion is far from universal among scientists. And today, as religious groups challenge scientists in arenas as various as evolution in the classroom, AIDS prevention and stem cell research, scientists who embrace religion are beginning to speak out about their faith.

"It should not be a taboo subject, but frankly it often is in scientific circles," said Francis S. Collins, who directs the National Human Genome Research Institute and who speaks freely about his Christian faith.

According to a much-discussed survey reported in the journal Nature in 1997, 40 percent of biologists, physicists and mathematicians said they believed in God - and not just a nonspecific transcendental presence but, as the survey put it, a God to whom one may pray "in expectation of receiving an answer."

The survey, by Edward J. Larson of the University of Georgia, was intended to replicate one conducted in 1914, and the results were virtually unchanged. In both cases, participants were drawn from a directory of American scientists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/national/23believers.html

Starlite Stumblers

By George V. Schubel

It all started at the New Dancer dance hosted by the new dancer class of the Starlite Shufflers’ square dance club of Sacramento, California. Three club members (Joyce, Sharon and Betty) asked my wife Patty and I if we would like to join the Starlite Shufflers’ comedy demonstration team, the Starlite Stumblers. I knew they wore a big sack over their heads and it was sure to be hot in there. I get very hot when I dance even without a sack over my head. In fact I think most of the club members knew me as the new guy who always fans himself before they even knew my name.

To get ready for out first performance we would have five Sunday afternoon practice sessions. The first two would be in regular street clothes; the next practice would add the swim flippers. Then there would be one with the sack over my head and the flippers and the last practice would be in full costume with the sack, the jacket with the fake stuffed arms and of course the swim flippers. The large burlap sack had a face on it and the costume made you look like you were 4 feet tall.

Roy and Evelyn, past Stumblers, gave us a beautiful set of matching costumes. I could not resist trying mine on in my house. On went the flippers; over my head went the comic sack head. Inside the sack I held onto the plastic pipe that held up the sack. Patty fastened the fancy jacket with the great false arms around my waist. I tried to walk around in the house, but right off I stepped on the dog and banged into the walls a few times. No doubt about it, I was getting the hang of this. This will be a piece of cake.

http://squaredancehumor.blogspot.com/

Median county home price slips

San Jose Mercury News

By Margaret Steen, Mercury News

The median price of a single-family home in Santa Clara County declined slightly in July, falling to $700,000 from $705,000 in June, according to DataQuick Information Systems, which gathers data from public records of completed sales. It was the first monthly decline in a year.

Still, it's not clear whether the drop means the market has reached its peak or merely has entered a normal summer slowdown. Prices also declined slightly from June to July 2004, then zoomed to record highs.

The volume of sales also declined: 1,887 single-family homes were sold in the county in July, down from 2,175 the previous month. The sales numbers also were down from July of last year, when 2,045 houses were sold. Nonetheless, last month tied for the third busiest July in the 18 years DataQuick has collected real estate information.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/12403099.htm

Housing market dips a bit

San Francisco Chronicle

by Kelly Zito, Chronicle Staff Writer

The torrid Bay Area housing market hit the pause button in July, with sales falling nearly 11 percent and prices dipping below record territory for the first time this year, a real estate information firm reported Tuesday.

The median price for a single-family home in the nine counties last month was $643,000, nearly 18 percent above the year-ago median, but just shy of the June peak of $644,000, according to DataQuick in La Jolla.

The number of properties that changed hands in July dropped 11.9 percent from June and 10.8 percent from July 2004.

For the last few years, economists have fretted that the Bay Area and other high-priced housing markets represent bubbles on the verge of popping -- in the worst-case scenario -- or at least leaking some air.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/17/HOMES.TMP

Wheaton College lifts 143-year dance ban (2003)

CNN

Wheaton College is a Christian school that had not allowed social dancing since the war.

The Civil War.

For generations, students were barred from dancing -- on campus or off -- unless it was with members of the same sex or a square dance. It was not until the 1990s that students and faculty were permitted to dance with spouses or relatives at family events such as weddings.

Nine months ago, the school lifted the ban altogether, freeing students to cut the rug on campus or off, at Chicago clubs or other places. Under the new set of rules, called the Community Covenant, students may dance, but should avoid behavior "which may be immodest, sinfully erotic or harmfully violent."

Judging by what happened at a recent dance in the gym, meeting those criteria will not be a problem. There was no slithering going on, only students, some about as rigid as rakes, watching their feet as they tried to master some basic steps.

"They had a lot of fun, but they kind of approached it from almost an academic standpoint," said Rich Nickel, a local dance instructor who helped get the students ready for the Rhythm Rockets' lineup, which will feature such standards as "Sentimental Journey" and "Sunny Side of the Street."

All of which led one parent to remark: "They MAY dance at Wheaton. Whether they CAN dance is another question."

http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/11/14/wheaton.dance.ap/

Do-Si-Do Fitness (2001)

Web MD

By Denise Mann

With all its moving, twisting, and turning, square dancing provides more than the daily dose of heart- and bone-healthy physical activity. Remembering all the calls -- from "do-si-do" to 'alemand' -- keeps the mind sharp, potentially staving off age-related memory loss, experts say. And the companionship that regular square dancing offers is an antidote to depression and loneliness, a statement confirmed by square-dancing advocates everywhere.

http://my.webmd.com/content/article/11/1676_53041

Meet Evangelist Tony Campolo

The Progressive

By John Oliver Mason, From the August 2005 Issue

An ordained Baptist minister, Tony Campolo overcame a heresy trial to preach social justice in the United States. Along with Jim Wallis of Sojourners and Ron Sider, the founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, Campolo is trying to counter the forces of the religious right from within a church-based tradition.

"To be a Christian in today's world is to be opposed to America," he says. "Why? America believes in capital punishment, and Jesus says, ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.’ America says, ‘Blessed are the rich.’ Jesus said, ‘Woe unto you who are rich, blessed are the poor.’ America says, ‘Blessed are the powerful.’ Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’ "

"It's about time we realized that Christianity is a call not to conservatism but to change," he says. "Jesus came to the world not to conserve the system as it was, but to change the world into what it ought to be. That's where I am, and that's where I want to be."

http://progressive.org/?q=mag_camp0805

iGod

London News-Telegraph

By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent

The podcast is becoming the Godcast. In a phenomenon which has amazed the clergy, thousands of worshippers are using their iPods to listen to sermons.

While most people use their fashionable portable music players to download their favourite pop tunes from the internet, many are adding a spiritual element to their playlists.

Even the Vatican is catching up with the new trend. Its official radio station in Rome is now offering its own podcasts, and the latest features Pope Benedict XIV issuing a far from fashionable message - a critique of feminism.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/05/nigod05.xml&sShe
et=/news/2005/08/05/ixhome_fri.html

A new church for gay believers

Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader

By Frank E. Lockwood, Herald-Leader Staff Writer

Jubilee Fellowship describes itself as Christ-centered, spirit-filled, Bible-based and open and affirming.

In other words, it's a Pentecostal-style, gay-friendly church, and it's coming to Lexington.

The Rev. Cori Wood, the new congregation's pastor, is a fervent, tongues-speaking, Scripture-quoting preacher.

She's also a lesbian.

Across America, small, predominantly gay Pentecostal and Charismatic churches are forming in Tampa, Fla.; Little Rock, Ark.; and San Jose, Calif.

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/living/religion/12308061.htm

More evidence for the end of a housing bubble

New York Times Op-Ed

by Paul Krugman

In the nation as a whole, housing prices rose about 50 percent between the first quarter of 2000 and the first quarter of 2005. But that average blends results from Flatland metropolitan areas like Houston and Atlanta, where prices rose 26 and 29 percent respectively, with results from Zoned Zone areas like New York, Miami and San Diego, where prices rose 77, 96 and 118 percent.

Business Week reports that by 2004 the cost of renting a house in San Diego was only 40 percent of the cost of owning a similar house - even taking into account low interest rates on mortgages. So it makes sense to buy in San Diego only if you believe that prices will keep rising rapidly, generating big capital gains. That's pretty much the definition of a bubble.

Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has become deeply dependent on the housing bubble. The economic recovery since 2001 has been disappointing in many ways, but it wouldn't have happened at all without soaring spending on residential construction, plus a surge in consumer spending largely based on mortgage refinancing. Did I mention that the personal savings rate has fallen to zero?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html

14-month-old deaf twins get surgical implants to aid hearing

San Jose Mercury News

By HongDao Nguyen, Mercury News

When Olivia and Tallulah Hogan entered the audiologist's office Tuesday morning, the girls could barely hear the roar of a motorcycle engine with a hearing aid. But the 14-month-old twins left the room with technology that will enable them to hear their mother's voice in another room.

The Los Gatos girls, deaf since birth, are among the youngest in the country to have "cochlear implants" surgically inserted in both ears at once. On Tuesday, an audiologist at the California Ear Institute in East Palo Alto activated the devices amid a roomful of hushed onlookers and family members.

Their implants are thin, oval-shaped devices, about the size of a fat peanut, placed behind the ear underneath the skin.

The implants work with half-dollar-size magnetic microphones the girls wear on the sides of their heads and processors they wear in their pockets like small iPods to convert sounds their inner ears can process.

Though cochlear implants have been around since the 1970s, it's only been in the last few years that implanting two instead of one has become more popular, said Lisa Tonokawa, an audiologist with the Let Them Hear Foundation, a non-profit affiliated with the California Ear Institute. Two implants give patients a better sense of where sound is coming from.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/health/12290488.htm

See also these other earlier stories:

Implants allow twins to hear for first time (Deaf Today, April 2003)

Twin infants hear at near normal levels for first time (The Leader, January 2005)

Bono gives an explicit confession of being saved by Grace, not Karma

World Magazine

by Gene Edward Veith

Is Bono, the lead singer and songwriter for the rock group U2, a Christian? He says he is and writes about Christianity in his lyrics. Yet many people question whether Bono is "really" a Christian, due to his notoriously bad language, liberal politics, and rock star antics (though he has been faithfully married for 23 years).

"It's a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the Universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma."

http://www.worldmag.com/subscriber/displayarticle.cfm?id=10892

Feminists for Life

Christianity Today

Feminists for Life sees itself as an extension of the first wave of American feminists who sought voting rights for women to, among other things, protect their children and pass anti-abortion legislation. "Without known exception, the early American feminists condemned abortion in the strongest possible terms," president Serrin Foster says in her anthologized speech, "The Feminist Case Against Abortion."

"The early feminists understood that, much like today, women resorted to abortion because they were abandoned or pressured by boyfriends, husbands, and parents and lacked financial resources to have a baby on their own.

"Ironically, the anti-abortion laws that early feminists worked so hard to enact to protect women and children were the very ones destroyed by the Roe v. Wade decision 100 years later—a decision hailed by the National Organization for Women (NOW) as the 'emancipation of women.'"

Feminists for Life builds upon the work of the early American feminists who found their feminist moorings in the Bible, says Mimi Haddad, president of Christians for Biblical Equality. "Secular feminists often place their feminist convictions above the authority of Scripture. The early feminists were suffragists because they believed their Christian voice had an important place in the public square."

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/130/52.0.html

North Dakota man wins annual bad-writing contest

Associated Press

Her Chest Is Like A Carburetor

SAN FRANCISCO -- A man who compared a woman's anatomy to a carburetor won an annual contest that celebrates the worst writing in the English language.

Dan McKay, a computer analyst at Microsoft Great Plains in Fargo, N.D., bested thousands of entrants from North Pole, Alaska to Manchester, England to triumph Wednesday in San Jose State University's annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

"As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire," he wrote, comparing a woman's breasts to "small knurled caps of the oil dampeners."

The competition highlights literary achievements of the most dubious sort -- terrifyingly bad sentences that take their inspiration from minor writer Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" began, "It was a dark and stormy night."

"We want writers with a little talent, but no taste," San Jose State English Professor Scott Rice said. "And Dan's entry was just ludicrous."

McKay was is in China and could not be reached to comment about his status as a world-renowned wretched writer. He will receive $250.

Rice said the challenge began as a worst paragraph contest, but judges soon realized no one should have to wade through so much putrid prose -- such as this zinger, which took a dishonorable mention.

"The rising sun crawled over the ridge and slithered across the hot barren terrain into every nook and cranny like grease on a Denny's grill in the morning rush, but only until eleven o'clock when they switch to the lunch menu," wrote Lester Guyse, a retired fraud investigator in Portland, Ore.

"That was the least favorite of the five I entered, but you win any way you can," Guyse said.

Ken Aclin, of Shreveport, La., won the Grand Panjandrum's Award for his shocking similes and abusive use of adjectives. He wrote that India "hangs like a wet washcloth from the towel rack of Asia."

"I just saw that washcloth hanging in the shower and it looked like India," he said. "I'll be doggone."

On the Net: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

Gluten-Free Market Goes Mainstream

Yahoo News, AP

By CANDICE CHOI, Associated Press Writer

Now manufacturers are rolling out gluten-free equivalents of everything from pizza crusts to doughnuts, buns and cakes. Once banished to the dusty bottom shelves of obscure grocers, the gluten-free revolution is surfacing in the aisles of major supermarkets.

At Wal-Mart, "gluten-free" products are hitting the shelves this month. The retailing giant is requiring suppliers to identify whenever gluten is used in its private-label products, said Bob Anderson, general merchandise manager of the company's Great Value brand.

What makes the market appetizing is that it's no flash in the pan. Celiac disease is an incurable, lifelong condition, said Pam Cureton, a clinical dietitian at the University of Maryland Center for Celiac Disease.

The only way to manage the condition is to banish gluten — a trickier feat than one might expect. Wheat, rye and barley are in products ranging from soy sauce to beer to modified food starch. Even the slightest trace can wreak havoc on the digestive system for weeks.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/fit_gluten_free;_ylt=Ak9OxlAz.JqfzU1Hb_WIV_.s0NUE;_yl
u=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-

Home prices more apt to drop

San Jose Mercury News

Valley is fourth riskiest market in US, study says

By Sue McAllister, Mercury News

With the local job market weak and real estate prices rising faster than incomes, chances are better than 50 percent that home values in Santa Clara County will fall in the next two years, a mortgage insurance company said Wednesday.

In its quarterly "market risk index," Walnut Creek-based PMI Mortgage Insurance calculated a 51.3 percent likelihood that home prices in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara will drop over the next two years.

"What we see in a lot of California markets, and certainly San Jose ... is prices are outstripping incomes," said Beth Haiken, a PMI spokeswoman.

The area, which includes all of Santa Clara County, had -0.82 percent employment growth between March 2004 and March 2005, she said.

http://www.mercurynews.com:80/mld/mercurynews/news/12243396.htm

Melting snow leaves falls gushing, rivers bulging

San Jose Mercury News

By Patrick May, Mercury News

Normally as dry as a drumstick in late July, the park right now is a water wonderland. Lower those Six Flags -- Yosemite is now California's top water park. The winter's huge snowpack is finally melting, waterfalls and rivers are gushing, and the leaking sieve of valley walls looks like a plumbing project on a divine scale.

Ribbon and Sentinel Falls are making rare cameo appearances. Rafters are jockeying for position on the fattened Merced River. So many mosquitoes have invaded Tuolumne Meadows that biologists say the bats are getting their fill in two hours and then going home early.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/12195909.htm

A few techniques to help ward off all the phishers

San Francisco Chronicle

Just remember, no reputable company will ever send you an e-mail asking for personal information or directing you to a Web site seeking it. If you get such an e-mail, it's a fraud.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/07/11/BUGIJDK
PM91.DTL

Wi-Fi cloaks a new breed of intruder

St. Petersburg Times

Police say Benjamin Smith III, 41, used his Acer brand laptop to hack into Richard Dinon's wireless Internet network. The April 20 arrest is considered the first of its kind in Tampa Bay and among only a few so far nationwide.

Experts believe there are scores of incidents occurring undetected, sometimes to frightening effect. People have used the cloak of wireless to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats, according to authorities.

As worrisome as it seems, wireless mooching is easily preventable by turning on encryption or requiring passwords. The problem, security experts say, is many people do not take the time or are unsure how to secure their wireless access from intruders. Dinon knew what to do.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/07/04/State/Wi_Fi_cloaks_a_new_br.shtml

Payback time: FTC Chair's Credit Card Info Stolen

San Francisco Chronicle, AP News

An FTC spokeswoman says FTC chief Deborah Platt Majoras received a letter last week from shoe retailer DSW informing her that her credit card information had been stolen. The spokeswoman declined further comment. The theft was first reported