“We will be OK…as long as the wind blows.” -- Kate Wilson, age 3†



I am feeling today a heavy burden to capture for you in words something that would dramatically deepen your understanding of our mission and leave you as breathless as we are most days. How can I get just one spark to fall in the right place so that a blaze of generosity, volunteerism, and abiding love will ignite around us!?

So, I sit here looking inside my soul, waiting for inspiration to pen some great insight or profound mystical understanding. I hear a silent voice ask me to look at the trees outside…how they move with the wind. Watch the birds…how they coast and dive with the breeze. Gaze upwards to the puffy clouds…how they follow along at their own pace. The smell of springtime in the wind lifts my spirit and calms my breathing. A slow, deep breath overtakes me and I hold it in for as long as I can. Inspiration is literally all around me and within me.

The ancient Greeks and Semitics each used only one word for wind, breath, and spirit. As they observed the world around them, they knew that something was pushing on them both inside and outside. Sometimes the pneuma or ruach was very gentle, other times they were literally blown away. I think the same is true for those of us who are moved by the mission of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The wind is always pushing and pulling us. Most of the time it is a soothing breeze, but sometimes the wind is so strong that it hurts. Each of us offers unique breath to “hope, strength, and joy.” Most of the time laughter and joy fill our lungs, but sometimes the pain and sorrow take our breath away. Most of the time we sense a spirit swirling around us and binding us together, but sometimes we cannot find it and feel lost.

You are pneuma and ruach to us. Thank you for sharing with us and walking alongside us as we travel our winding roads of wish granting. Some days you are the wind in our sails. Some days you are the breath on our lips. Some days you are the spirit which binds us tightly. We should tell you more often how much power and effect you have on us and on our mission. You move us! Your gifts of encouragement, time, and resources are what fill and move our wishes…nothing else will! Therefore, I believe with great certainty that, “We will be OK…as long as the wind blows.”

I wish you grace and peace,

Paul Griffin Jones, III (Trey)

†Kate Wilson is the youngest daughter of Stan and Jennifer Wilson. Stan is the pastor of my church. Kate spoke these words during Sunday school on Pentecost Sunday. Let the little children come…indeed!

Officer breast-feeds quake orphans

What a beautiful act of kindness, tenderness, and love. Jiang Xiaojuan demonstrates to all of us a simple, yet profound, way of living: Offer what you have to those in need. She has milk. What do you and I have?



JIANGYOU, China (CNN) -- A Chinese police officer is being hailed as a hero after taking it upon herself to breast-feed several infants who were separated from their mothers or orphaned by China's devastating earthquake.

Officer Jiang Xiaojuan, 29, the mother of a 6-month-old boy, responded to the call of duty and the instincts of motherhood when the magnitude-7.9 quake struck on May 12.

"I am breast-feeding, so I can feed babies. I didn't think of it much," she said. "It is a mother's reaction and a basic duty as a police officer to help."

The death toll in the earthquake jumped Thursday to more than 51,000, and more than 29,000 are missing, according to government figures. Thousands of children have been orphaned; many others have mothers who simply can't feed them.

At one point, Jiang was feeding nine babies.

"Some of the moms were injured; their fathers were dead ... five of them were orphans. They've gone away to an orphanage now," she said.

She still feeds two babies, including Zhao Lyuyang, son of a woman who survived the quake but whose breast milk stopped flowing because of the traumatic conditions.

"We walked out of the mountains for a long time. I hadn't eaten in days when I got here, and my milk was not enough," said that mother, Zhao Zong Jun. "She saved my baby. I thank her so much. I can't express how I feel."

Liu Rong, another mother whose breast milk stopped in the trauma, was awed by Jiang's kindness.

"I am so touched because she has her own baby, but she fed the disaster babies first," Liu said. "If she hadn't fed my son, he wouldn't have had enough to eat."

Jiang has became a celebrity, followed by local media and proclaimed on a newspaper front page as "China's Mother No. 1."

She's embarrassed by the fuss.

"I think what I did was normal," she said. "In a quake zone, many people do things for others. This was a small thing, not worth mentioning."

There has been a huge outpouring of support from families who want to adopt babies orphaned by the quake. But that process takes time, and there are mouths to feed.

Jiang misses her own son, who's being cared for through the emergency by in-laws in another town, but she is aware of the new connections she's made.

"I feel about these kids I fed just like my own. I have a special feeling for them. They are babies in a disaster."


From Hugh Riminton

CNN International

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/22/china.breastfeed/index.html

© 2008 Cable News Network

Money fears might have led to bridge collapse

Money before life, safety, and general welfare? Gasp! Choke! Spew! Sigh. Whimper. Tear. Sadness. Anger! Will this ever stop? Can we change our ways? Si, Se Puede!



ST. PAUL, Minnesota (AP) -- Transportation officials' concerns that fixing or replacing a Minneapolis bridge would be a "budget buster" may have led to bad maintenance decisions before its deadly collapse in August, a report released Wednesday concluded.

The report, commissioned by the Legislature, also criticized the Minnesota Department of Transportation for bridge inspections that were mishandled or not acted upon over the years, even when they called for immediate repairs.

The department has come under sharp criticism for its upkeep of the 40-year-old Interstate 35W bridge, even as an ongoing federal investigation has highlighted a design flaw and the weight of construction materials on the bridge, rather than maintenance, as critical factors in the collapse that killed 13 people.

"Financial considerations, we believe, did play a part in the decision-making" over repair of the bridge, said Robert Stein, who oversaw the report prepared for lawmakers by the law firm Gray Plant Mooty.

"Sometimes it's easier just to take the least expensive alternative or just commission another study," Stein said.

For example, instead of a $40,000 ground-penetrating radar survey of the bridge deck in 2006, engineers dragged a chain across the span to listen for unsound concrete. The radar test, an internal e-mail notes, "was not completed due to lack of funding."

That same year, officials from the state's bridge division examined rehabilitation and reconstruction options. In meeting minutes, they noted that a replacement bridge would cost $75 million or more, a project they concluded would be "cost-prohibitive" and not in the cards for 20 years.

In 2004 and 2005, presentations assembled for top-level department meetings had the Interstate 35W bridge on a list of "budget buster" bridges, referring to the major spans that were due for costly renovations or replacements over the next 10 years.

The new bridge, expected to be completed by this fall, will cost at least $230 million.

Transportation Commissioner Tom Sorel, who took the job last month after Carol Molnau was ousted, said he was reviewing the report and couldn't comment in detail on many of its findings.

"Addressing the condition and safety needs of our bridge system has never been and never will be subject to question due to budgetary concern," Sorel said. "We rely on and invest in the expert opinions and recommendations of our bridge engineering professionals."

Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty has asked Sorel to determine whether the report should lead to changes in organization of the transportation department. But Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung said, "Until the cause of the collapse is determined, it is not possible to know whether anything in this report is relevant to the bridge collapse."

Much of the report was devoted to flaws in the way the state Department of Transportation carried out inspections and then reacted to what it found. The report noted a lag of as much as six months between an inspection and the writing of a report, raising concerns that "fading memories" might lead to a lack of useful detail.

The 35W bridge was rated in "serious to poor" condition for 17 consecutive years by the National Bridge Inventory Standards.

The report said state guidelines called for the rust to be scraped off bridge trusses so the good steel could be measured precisely. But after 1993, precise measurements weren't included in yearly bridge reports. That meant that in 1998, transportation officials recalculating the bridge's weight capacity had to use the original design measurements rather than the amount of good steel that was really on the bridge, the report said.

Two state inspectors who wrote inspection reports said they had never even seen a written copy of the guidelines about measuring the remaining metal. And supervisors who should have made sure the reports were complete did not, the report said.

The National Transportation Safety Board's investigation of the collapse has found that some of the bridge gussets -- the plates that helped connect its steel girders -- were too thin because of a design error. The NTSB investigation also said that the weight of construction materials placed on the bridge during resurfacing was a factor in the August 1 collapse, which injured 145 people in addition to the 13 killed.

The NTSB investigation is expected to conclude this year.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/21/bridge.collapse.ap/index.html

© 2008 Cable News Network

Gates: U.S. 'stuck' in Guantanamo

I am no legal expert; but, I am pretty sure there is no "stuck" classification in the Constitution. One is only guilty after being tried by a court defined within the scope of the Constitution with the benefit of legal counsel and, of course, presumed innocent until guilt is found.



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Efforts to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are at "a standstill," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a Senate subcommittee Tuesday.

"The brutally frank answer is that we're stuck, and we're stuck in several ways," Gates told the defense subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Human rights groups have long called for the facility to be closed, alleging that detainees endure numerous human rights violations amounting to torture.

CIA chief Michael Hayden admitted this year that the agency had used waterboarding, a controversial technique that simulates drowning, on three Guantanamo detainees.

Gates said that he favors closing the detention center, which currently holds about 270 detainees, but that a number of problems stand in the way.

For one, Gates said, there are about 70 detainees ready for release whose home governments either will not accept them or may free them after they return.

He referred to former Guantanamo detainee Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, who killed himself in a suicide attack last month in Mosul, Iraq, after being released from Guantanamo in 2005.

Al-Ajmi was not the first former detainee reported to have returned to the battlefield after leaving Guantanamo. Pentagon officials say that more than 10 people have been killed or captured in fighting after being released from the detention facility.

Gates said there were also several detainees who cannot be freed but who are also ineligible for prosecution under the military courts set up by the Bush administration. Gates did not elaborate on why those detainees would not be charged.

"What do you do with that irreducible 70 or 80, or whatever the number is, who you cannot let loose but will not be charged and will not be sent home?" Gates asked.

Furthermore, he said, there are lots of obstacles to overcome in order to send the detainees to U.S. prisons.

"We have a serious 'not in my backyard' problem. I haven't found anybody who wants these terrorists to be placed in a prison in their home state," he said.

Last week, a lawyer for several Guantanamo detainees said that a judge's decision could further delay efforts to try al Qaeda figures held at Guantanamo Bay.

A military judge ordered Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, a Pentagon lawyer, to stay out of the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver and bodyguard, after ruling that he exerted improper influence on prosecutors trying the case.

Defense attorney Charles Swift said the ruling is likely to stall the case against Hamdan and other al Qaeda figures being tried in the Bush administration's military courts.

The Bush administration insists that it does not torture suspected terrorists during interrogations. The president said that top al Qaeda suspects had been subjected to "tough" but legal interrogation methods in prisons overseas.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/20/gates.guantanamo/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

© 2008 Cable News Network

U.S. soldier uses Quran for target practice; military apologizes

I am afraid that the sins of one soldier could set our children's teeth on edge for another generation. I cannot believe the foolishness of using a holy book of indigenous people as a target by an occupying soldier...surely he knew what he was doing and how it would be received by ANYONE in Iraq?! My comments are not religious or political in nature this time...they are simply pointing out what is to me obvious, common sense reasoning. I say with equal conviction that most religious zealots need to take a chill-pill and learn to laugh a little bit. Perhaps God will raise up a Mel Brooks within the Muslim world...we can only hope and pray!



BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A soldier used the Quran -- Islam's holy book -- for target practice, forcing the chief U.S. commander in Baghdad to issue a formal apology on Saturday.

Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, flanked by leaders from Radhwaniya in the western outskirts of Baghdad, apologized for the staff sergeant who was a sniper section leader assigned to the headquarters of the 64th Armored Regiment. He also read a letter of apology by the shooter.

It was the first time the incident -- which tested the relationship between U.S.-backed Sunni militiamen and the military -- was made public since it was discovered May 11.

"I come before you here seeking your forgiveness," Hammond said to tribal leaders and others at the apology ceremony. "In the most humble manner I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers." VideoWatch villagers protest the Quran incident »

Another military official kissed a Quran and presented it as "a humble gift" to the tribal leaders.

The soldier, whose name was not released, shot at a Quran on May 9, villagers said. The Quran used in the incident was discovered two days later, according to the military.

Hammond also read from the shooter's letter: "I sincerely hope that my actions have not diminished the partnership that our two nations have developed together. ... My actions were shortsighted, very reckless and irresponsible, but in my heart [the actions] were not malicious." VideoWatch Hammond issue apology »

A tribal leader said "the criminal act by U.S. forces" took place at a shooting range at the Radhwaniya police station. After the shooters left, an Iraqi policeman found a target marked in the middle of the bullet-riddled Quran.

Copies of the pictures of the Quran obtained by CNN show multiple bullet holes and an expletive scrawled on one of its pages.

A military investigation found the shooter guilty and relieved him of duty; he will be redeployed to the United States for reassignment away from the 1st Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, a U.S. official said.

"The actions of one soldier were nothing more than criminal behavior," Hammond said. "I've come to this land to protect you, to support you -- not to harm you -- and the behavior of this soldier was nothing short of wrong and unacceptable."

Officials said the soldier claimed he wasn't aware the book was the Quran. U.S. officials rejected the claim.

Tribal leaders, dignitaries and local security officials attended the ceremony, while residents carried banners and chanted slogans, including "Yes, yes to the Quran" and "America out, out."

Sheikh Hamadi al-Qirtani, in a speech on behalf of all tribal sheiks of Radhwaniya, called the incident "aggression against the entire Islamic world."

The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq also condemned the shooter's actions and the U.S. military's belated acknowledgment of the incident.

"As the Association of Muslim Scholars condemns this heinous crime against God's holy book, the Constitution of this nation, a source of pride and dignity," the groups statement said, "they condemned the silence by all those who are part of the occupation's agenda and holds the occupation and the current government fully responsible for this violation and reminds everyone that God preserves his book and he [God] is a great avenger."

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/05/17/iraq.quran/index.html

© 2008 Cable News Network

Be sure to click on the link on Mel Brooks' name if you missed it!!!

How do pilots spell relief: AMXD

When you gotta go...you gotta go!



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Where do fighter pilots traveling faster than the speed of sound go when they really need to "go"?

Until recently, the answer has been: into a bag.

But it's not a great solution. "Piddle packs" -- heavy-duty bags containing absorbent sponges -- have been blamed for at least two crashes over the years, and they're not always tidy.

A few years ago, after enduring years of complaints from pilots, the Air Force let it be known that it was looking for an answer.

A small medical equipment development company in Milton, Vermont answered the call.

"The DoD put out a list of projects they needed solutions for," said Mark Harvie, president of Omni Medical Solutions. "Bladder relief for pilots was one of the items on the list and we were looking for a new project," he said.

That project turned into the Advanced Mission Extender Device, known in military jargon as the AMXD.

After four years of testing by the Vermont Air National Guard and the Air Force and about $5 million in government and private funds, AMXD is spelling relief for pilots aloft.

Under the old system, pilots routinely avoid liquids before taking off to prevent the unmentionable. But dehydration can make them more susceptible to the G-forces typically seen in fighter aircraft, Harvie said.

When nature's call becomes too pressing to ignore, a pilot has to fly and unbuckle the harness at the same time -- while using both hands to maneuver around in a seat to which he or she is virtually molded.

The aerobatic maneuver is even harder for female pilots.

On long or cold-weather flights, the amount of gear and clothing made the maneuver nearly impossible, and pilots would sometimes have no choice but to relieve themselves in their flight suits.

In the AMXD, a cup for a man and a pad for a woman is strategically placed before the pilot dons a flight suit.

An instructional DVD tells pilots: "When the time comes to urinate, unzip the flight suit, remove the hose.... The control unit will pump the urine from the cup to the collection bag, where it will be chemically gelled."

Pilots are free to think about other business.

Harvie said the reviews have been positive from pilots of both genders. "One woman had the device taken away after testing and was quite unhappy about having to return to the old method," he said.

"The AMXD worked as advertised. I believe it's a much better system and needs to be fielded ASAP," says an unidentified pilot in a testimonial on the instructional DVD.

The Air Force recently bought its first 300 systems for U.S. pilots around the world at $2,000 each.

There's room for expansion. The air service has more than 4,200 fighter pilots who fly planes that have no bathrooms, planes like the F-16, F-15, A-10 and the most advanced fighter, the F-22.

The system has already seen action in combat zones: Female helicopter pilots from the Netherlands used the system in Afghanistan.

Harvie said it's too early to know whether the device will become standard issue, but it has attracted plenty of interest. "The Navy and Army are starting to look at the system for ground troops and carrier pilots, and looking at a version for private-sector uses," Harvie said.

Harvie said the Belgian Air Force has bought the system for its F-16 pilots.

From Mike Mount

CNN

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/16/airforce.relief/index.html

© 2008 Cable News Network

This is why I remain inclined towards the type of Republicanism espoused by Representative Ron Paul...

Ron Paul Prior to the Iraq War

Joe Biden: Bush's comments were 'bullshit'

Speaking truth to power is not always eloquent...



Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), piling on to Democratic complaints about President Bush’s speech in Israel today:

“This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset ... and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”

Speaking before the Knesset, Bush said that “some people” believe the United States “should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along."

"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Democrats have interpreted the comments as an attack on Sen. Barack Obama, and Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the president was out of line.

“He is the guy who has weakened us,” he said. “He has increased the number of terrorists in the world. It is his policies that have produced this vulnerability that the U.S. has. It’s his [own] intelligence community [that] has pointed this out, not me.”

Biden noted that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have both suggested that the United States ought to find a way to talk more with its enemies.

"If he thinks this is appeasement, is he going to come back and fire his own cabinet?” Biden asked. “Is he going to fire Condi Rice?”

In a separate statement, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said that Bush "is still playing the disgusting and dangerous political game Karl Rove perfected, which is insulting to every American and disrespectful to our ally Israel. George Bush should be making Israel secure, not slandering Barack Obama from the Knesset."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also weighed in.

“Not surprisingly, the engineer of the worst foreign policy in our nation’s history has fired yet another reckless and reprehensible round," said Reid. "For the President to make this statement before the government of our closest ally as it celebrates a remarkable milestone demeans this historic moment with partisan politics."

The White House insists that Bush wasn’t referring specifically to Obama, an argument that Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) called "baloney."

"There is no escaping what the president is doing," said Durbin, who supports Obama. "It is an attack on Sen. Obama’s position that we should not be avoiding even those we disagree with when it comes to negotiations and diplomacy."

Durbin called Bush's remarks "unfair and really unfortunate."

UPDATE: In a conference call with reporters later in the afternoon, Biden said his initial word choice was "not very eloquent" and said he should have just stuck with the word "malarkey." Biden said he "reacted viscerally" when asked about Bush's speech after stepping off an elevator.

However, Biden again did not mince words when discussing Bush's remarks, accusing the president of engaging in "long-distance swiftboating" with his speech in Israel. Biden also cited numerous examples of the Bush Administration reaching out to unfriendly regimes in Libya, North Korea and Iran, arguing that Bush's insinuation that the Democrats were soft on terrorism was "truly delusional ... and truly disgraceful."

Posted on The Crypt at Politico.com
By Daniel W. Reilly
May 15, 2008 at 11:54 AM

Permalink: http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0508/Biden_Bushs_comments_were_bullshit.html

© 2008 Capitol News Company LLC

Model ‘too fat’ for runway speaks out

Speaking truth to power includes how we view and treat women. First reported by the Wall Street Journal on February 28, 2008, accomplished teenage model, Alexandra "Ali" Michael, was told that she could not model in the Paris Fashion Week because her legs were "too fat." She has now begun to speak out about what happened. I think that the culture of fashion designers verges on the criminal. I applaud Ali's mother for standing by her and encouraging her to get "healthier." While I am opposed to excessive government regulation and oversight, I wonder if this is a legitimate workplace safety issue?



It’s one thing to have a figure to die for, but quite another to risk your life for your figure — a truth that teenage model Alexandra Michael is glad she learned before it was too late.

“My kind of wake-up call was I was on a plane from Paris to Texas, which is where I’m from,” Michael told TODAY’s Ann Curry Wednesday in New York. “I ran my fingers through my hair and when I took my hand away, there was a dry, brittle clump of hair in my hand.”

Michael had started her modeling career in Texas as a 5-foot-9, 130-pound 15-year-old, and at every rung she climbed on her career ladder, she heard the same thing: She needed to take off a few pounds.

It was a couple of pounds for Dallas, a few more for New York, and even more for Paris and the big international shows. Finally, she starved herself down to 102 pounds. The designers loved her.

But when she found her hair coming out in clumps as she flew home from a show last fall, she knew something was terribly wrong. “That’s kind of when I realized this wasn’t worth it anymore. This had completely taken over.”

Serious consequences
Michael, who turns 18 on Thursday, attracted the attention of The Wall Street Journal, which ran a story on the fashion industry’s continuing obsession with emaciated models and the eating disorders, illnesses and even deaths that are the price of their success. That led to an invitation from Teen Vogue for a cover shoot and the opportunity to tell her story to that magazine’s readers in the June/July issue, now on newsstands.

After her hair started falling out, Michael said she went to a nutritionist and her doctor. “I had serious consequences from not eating, like loss of my period for over a year and very, very low energy level,” she said.

Such complaints are common among models, for whom anorexia and bulimia are often just part of the job, Michael told Curry. She discovered that in Paris last year.

“I was sitting in a group of four girls,” Michael said. “I mentioned I hadn’t had a period in over a year and one by one, each one of them said, ‘Me, too.’ These were girls in their late teens, early 20s. There was no reason for that.”

No reason except the whims of the fashion designers, Leslie Goldman, author of “Locker Room Diaries,” told NBC. “In general, what designers are looking for is a model who in a sense will resemble a hanger when the clothing is on her,” she said. “The pressure to look thin is prevalent and rampant throughout our society. Modeling is like the microcosm of society, and there’s even more pressure.”

Thinner and thinner
“There’s been a shift in the fashion industry the last few years to extremely thin girls, almost emaciated,” Amy Astley, the editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue, told Curry. “It’s coming from the designers and it’s too much.”

It was Astley’s decision to feature Michael in her magazine’s new issue, and she hopes the teen’s story can help change the perception of beauty.

“The taste changes in models,” Astley said. The first skinny supermodel was the appropriately named Twiggy, a big-eyed waif who was all angles and who took the fashion world by storm in the 1960s. The industry then swung to curvy and athletic supermodels like Christie Brinkley and Naomi Campbell before turning to the cadaverous “heroin chic” look of the 1990s.

Today, super-thin continues to rule. Michael learned that after deciding she didn’t want to die for her job. She followed the advice of her medical advisers and put on 7 pounds. In January, now weighing 109, she went back to Paris for another big show. Only one designer would give her any work. The others sneered at her if they looked at her at all. Her legs, they told her, were too fat.

“I think it’s time to shift to something healthier,” Astley said. “We’ve been in this cycle of hyper-thin too long. I think that someone like Ali speaking out and Teen Vogue giving her a forum to speak out is part of the step toward changing.”

Michael agreed. “From my personal experience, it has to change,” she said. “We’re sending a message, and the fashion industry affects everybody — anybody who opens a magazine, anybody who watches TV.”

The average American woman is 5-foot-4 and weighs 163 pounds. The average supermodel is between 5-foot-9 and 5-foot-11 and weighs no more than 125 pounds. And as the United States spends $33 billion a year on diets and health professionals warn that the general population is getting fatter and fatter, the models get skinnier and skinnier — and so, too, do the girls and young women who try to emulate them.

“I don’t think that people realize that there are lifelong consequences,” Michael said. “Anorexia and bulimia can cause heart failure and osteoporosis and infertility. It’s a serious problem, and I think that it really needs to change.”

By Mike Celizic

TODAYShow.com contributor

updated 10:16 a.m. CT, Wed., May. 14, 2008

© 2008 MSNBC Interactive

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24614666/

© 2008 MSNBC.com

6 gas-saving myths

This article agrees that we want to save gas, but suggests that there is a lot of bad advice on how to do it. Some of it makes no difference, and some of it can wind up costing us.



NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- With gasoline prices hitting record levels, it seems everyone has a tip on how to save fuel. Much of the advice is well-intentioned, but in the end, much of it won't lower your gas bill.

Here's a look at a few misconceptions:

#1. Fill your tank in the morning

You may have heard that it's best to fill your gas tank in the early morning while the fuel is cold. The theory goes that fluids are more dense at lower temperatures, so a gallon of cold gas actually has more gas molecules than a gallon of warmer gas.

But the temperature of the gasoline as it comes out of the nozzle varies little during the course of the day, according to Consumer Reports, so there's little, if any, benefit, to getting up early to pump gas.

#2. Change your air filter

Maintaining your car is important, but a clean air filter isn't going to save you any gas. Modern engines have computer sensors that automatically adjust the fuel-air mixture as an increasingly clogged air filter chokes off the engine's air supply.

While engine power will decrease slightly as the air filter becomes clogged, a lack of performance or an increase in fuel consumption will be negligible, Consumer Reports says.

#3. Use premium fuel

With prices already over $4.00 a gallon, premium gasoline is a hard sell these days. But a lot of drivers think because their owners' manual recommends premium, they'll get better fuel economy if they stick with it. Really, they're paying more money for nothing.

Even cars for which premium is recommended won't suffer with regular fuel. Modern engine technology comes to the rescue again. When sensors detect regular instead of premium fuel, the system automatically adjusts spark plug timing. The result is a slight reduction in peak horsepower - really, you'll never notice - but no reduction in fuel economy.

#4. Pump up your tires

Proper tire inflation is important for a number of reasons. Under-inflated tires are bad for handling and can even cause a crash. Improper tire inflation also causes tires to wear out faster and to heat up more, which could trigger a dangerous high-speed blow-out.

According to on-the-road driving tests by both Consumer Reports and auto information site Edmunds.com, underinflated tires reduce fuel economy, so proper inflation is key.

But you should never over-inflate your tires. They'll get you slightly better fuel economy because there will be less tread touching the road, reducing friction. But that means less grip for braking and turning. The added risk of a crash isn't worth the extra mile a gallon you might gain.

#5. To A/C or not A/C

There's no question air-conditioning makes extra work for the engine, increasing fuel use. But car air conditioners are much more efficient today than they used to be. In around-town driving, using the A/C will drop fuel economy by about a mile a gallon.

Meanwhile, driving at higher speeds with the windows down greatly increases aerodynamic drag. As speed increases, drag becomes more of an issue, making A/C use the more efficient choice at high speeds.

At most speeds and in most vehicles, A/C use drains slightly more fuel than driving with the windows down, contends David Champion, head of auto testing for Consumer Reports. "My final take on is that it's very close," says Phil Reed, consumer advice editor for Edmunds.com. "It's hard to measure the difference and every vehicle is different."

The best choice - if temperature and humidity allow - is to keep the windows rolled up and to turn the A/C compressor off. You can keep the fans running to blow in air from the outside, but your car will be as aerodynamic as possible while still letting you breathe. You will save gas, but the fuel economy improvement will be slight.

#6. Bolt-ons and pour-ins

Before you buy a device that's supposed to make your car more fuel-efficient or pour in an allegedly gas-saving additive, ask yourself this: Don't you think oil and car companies aren't doing everything they can to beat their competitors?

If British Petroleum (BP) could add something to its gasoline that made cars go farther on a gallon, cars would be lining up at the company's pumps. Sure, people would burn their fuel-saving BP gas more slowly, but then they'd drive right past rivals' gas stations to come back to BP for more. BP stations could even charge more for their gas and still sell tons of the stuff.

So if there really was an additive that made gas burn up more slowly, it wouldn't be sold over the Internet one bottle at a time.

Likewise, car companies are already spending big bucks to increase fuel mileage. If General Motors could make its cars go significantly farther on a gallon simply by putting a device into the fuel line, don't think for a second it wouldn't be doing that. GM's car sales would go through the roof.

"There are a number of these gas-saving devices that are generally useless," says Champion.

But drivers who try them will swear they work. In reality, it's probably an automotive placebo effect, says Reed. Buy one of these devices or additives, and you're like to pay extreme attention to your fuel economy and how you drive.

Of course it can't hurt to keep a close eye on your driving habits -- and what kind of car you drive. In the end, that can make the most difference in saving gas.

Gas prices have climbed to record levels. Are you feeling the pinch? Tell us how gas prices are affecting you and what you're doing to cope. Send us your photos and videos, or email us to share your story.

By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNNMoney.com staff writer
First Published: May 13, 2008: 11:38 AM EDT

Find this article at:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/12/autos/ways_to_not_save_gas/index.htm?cnn=yes

© 2007 Cable News Network LP, LLP.

Instructions for the Care of Your Baby

Here Chris...this is for you. I followed these tips. Evan and Gabi turned out just fine!































Originally found on http://www.makememinimal.com/2008/instrucciones-para-cuidar-un-bebe/

Out of the Mouths of Babes...

Today is Pentecost...the day that the Church celebrates the outpouring of the Spirit of God in a manner consistent with the prophet Joel. In both Greek and Hebrew, the word for spirit could also be translated wind or breath. During children's Sunday School, our pastor's 3 year old daughter, Kate, uttered an amazingly profound and insightful thought that is worth sharing:

"We will live...as long as the wind blows."

To that all I can say is, Amen!


Acts 2:16-21

...this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel:
17 'AND IT SHALL BE IN THE LAST DAYS,' God says,
'THAT I WILL POUR FORTH OF MY SPIRIT ON ALL MANKIND;
AND YOUR SONS AND YOUR DAUGHTERS SHALL PROPHESY,
AND YOUR YOUNG MEN SHALL SEE VISIONS,
AND YOUR OLD MEN SHALL DREAM DREAMS;
18 EVEN ON MY BONDSLAVES, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN,
I WILL IN THOSE DAYS POUR FORTH OF MY SPIRIT
And they shall prophesy.
19 'AND I WILL GRANT WONDERS IN THE SKY ABOVE
AND SIGNS ON THE EARTH BELOW,
BLOOD, AND FIRE, AND VAPOR OF SMOKE.
20 'THE SUN WILL BE TURNED INTO DARKNESS
AND THE MOON INTO BLOOD,
BEFORE THE GREAT AND GLORIOUS DAY OF THE LORD SHALL COME.
21 'AND IT SHALL BE THAT EVERYONE WHO CALLS ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.'

Is It Time to Invade Burma?

Is this an example of neo-conservatism...or liberalism with a gun? Take our aid or die!!!



Saturday, May. 10, 2008
By Romesh Ratnesar

The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas and the poor state of Burma's infrastructure and health systems mean that number is sure to rise. With as many as 1 million people still at risk, it is conceivable that the death toll will, within days, approach that of the entire number of civilians killed in the genocide in Darfur.

So what is the world doing about it? Not much. The military regime that runs Burma initially signaled it would accept outside relief, but has imposed so many conditions on those who would actually deliver it that barely a trickle has made it through. Aid workers have been held at airports. U.N. food shipments have been seized. U.S. naval ships packed with food and medicine idle in the Gulf of Thailand, waiting for an all-clear that may never come.

Burma's rulers have relented slightly, agreeing Friday to let in supplies and perhaps even some foreign relief workers. The government says it will allow a US C-130 transport plane to land inside Burma Monday. But it's hard to imagine a regime this insular and paranoid accepting robust aid from the U.S. military, let alone agreeing to the presence of U.S. Marines on Burmese soil — as Thailand and Indonesia did after the tsunami. The trouble is that the Burmese haven't shown the ability or willingness to deploy the kind of assets needed to deal with a calamity of this scale — and the longer Burma resists offers of help, the more likely it is that the disaster will devolve beyond anyone's control. "We're in 2008, not 1908," says Jan Egeland, the former U.N. emergency relief coordinator. "A lot is at stake here. If we let them get away with murder we may set a very dangerous precedent."

That's why it's time to consider a more serious option: invading Burma. Some observers, including former USAID director Andrew Natsios, have called on the U.S. to unilaterally begin air drops to the Burmese people regardless of what the junta says. The Bush Administration has so far rejected the idea — "I can't imagine us going in without the permission of the Myanmar government," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday — but it's not without precedent: as Natsios pointed out to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. has facilitated the delivery of humanitarian aid without the host government's consent in places like Bosnia and Sudan.

A coercive humanitarian intervention would be complicated and costly. During the 2004 tsunami, some 24 U.S. ships and 16,000 troops were deployed in countries across the region; the mission cost the U.S. $5 million a day. Ultimately, the U.S. pledged nearly $900 million to tsunami relief. (By contrast, it has offered just $3.25 million to Burma.) But the risks would be greater this time: the Burmese government's xenophobia and insecurity make them prone to view U.S. troops — or worse, foreign relief workers — as hostile forces. (Remember Black Hawk Down?) Even if the U.S. and its allies made clear that their actions were strictly for humanitarian purposes, it's unlikely the junta would believe them. "You have to think it through — do you want to secure an area of the country by military force? What kinds of potential security risks would that create?" says Egelend. "I can't imagine any humanitarian organization wanting to shoot their way in with food."

So what other options exist? Retired General William Nash of the Council on Foreign Relations says the U.S. should first pressure China to use its influence over the junta to get them to open up and then supply support to the Thai and Indonesian militaries to carry out relief missions. "We can pay for it — we can provide repair parts to the Indonesians so they can get their Air Force up. We can lend the them two C-130s and let them paint the Indonesian flag on them," Nash says. "We have to get the stuff to people who can deliver it and who the Burmese government will accept, even if takes an extra day or two and even if it's not as efficient as the good old U.S. military." Egeland advocates that the U.N. Security Council take punitive steps short of war, such as freezing the regime's assets and issuing warrants for the arrest of individual junta members if they were to leave the country. Similar measures succeeded in getting the government of Ivory Coast to let in foreign relief teams in 2002, Egelend says.

And if that fails? "It's important for the rulers to know the world has other options," Egeland says. "If there were, say, the threat of a cholera epidemic that could claim hundreds of thousands of lives and the government was incapable of preventing it, then maybe yes — you would intervene unilaterally." But by then, it could be too late. The cold truth is that states rarely undertake military action unless their national interests are at stake; and the world has yet to reach a consensus about when, and under what circumstances, coercive interventions in the name of averting humanitarian disasters are permissible. As the response to the 2004 tsunami proved, the world's capacity for mercy is limitless. But we still haven't figured out when to give war a chance.

Find this article at: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1739053,00.html

Copyright 2008 Time Inc. All rights reserved.

Data recovered from Columbia disaster

Now that is really impressive...but also a little scary. Can our personal data truly be destroyed if we wish it? I mean come on...a computer hard-drive fell from space in a burning fuselage, hit the ground at an amazing rate, and fused with another piece of metal; but, the data was recovered and published! Wow!



* Information found on melted disk drive from shuttle Columbia disaster
* The drive had been used to store data from a scientific experiment
* Columbia broke apart during re-entry in 2003, killing its seven astronauts
* Researchers published results in the April issue of Physical Review E

(AP) -- Jon Edwards often manages what appears impossible. He has recovered precious data from computers wrecked in floods and fires and dumped in lakes.

Now Edwards may have set a new standard: He found information on a melted disk drive that fell from the sky when space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in 2003.

"When we got it, it was two hunks of metal stuck together. We couldn't even tell it was a hard drive. It was burned, and the edges were melted," said Edwards, an engineer at Kroll Ontrack Inc., outside Minneapolis, Minnesota. "It looked pretty bad at first glance, but we always give it a shot."

During Columbia's fateful mission, the drive had been used to store data from a scientific experiment on the properties of liquid xenon.

Most of the information was radioed to Earth during Columbia's voyage. Edwards was able to recover the remainder, allowing researchers to publish the experiment in the April issue of a science journal, Physical Review E.

That led Kroll Ontrack to share details of its salvage effort.

Columbia broke apart during re-entry into the atmosphere February 1, 2003, killing its seven astronauts. The shuttle had been damaged at launch by foam insulation that fell off an external fuel tank.

Like other Columbia debris, the mangled disk drive turned up in Texas. It was six months after the disaster when a NASA contractor sent the drive to Kroll Ontrack, which specializes in data recovery.

Edwards had reason for pessimism. Not only were the drive's metal and plastic elements scorched, but the seal on the side that keeps out dirt and dust also had melted. That made the drive vulnerable to particles that can scratch the tiny materials embedded inside, destroying their ability to retain data in endless 0s or 1s, depending on their magnetic charge.

However, at the core of the drive, the spinning metal platters that actually store data were not warped. They had been gouged and pitted, but the 340-megabyte drive was only half full, and the damage happened where data had not been written.

Edwards attributes that to a lucky twist: The computer was running an ancient operating system, DOS, which does not scatter data all over drives, as other approaches do.

After cleaning the platters with a chemical solution, Edwards used them in a newly built drive. The process -- two days from start to finish -- captured 99 percent of the drive's information.

Edwards was gratified.

And to drive home just what a long shot his recovery had been, he later had no success with two other drives found in Columbia's wreckage. Blasted by the unfathomable furnace of entry into the atmosphere, their metals had lost the ability to hold a magnetic charge.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/09/columbia.data.ap/index.html

© 2008 Cable News Network

R2D2 Projector: The Ultimate Geek Toy/Tool

I think I have found one of my wishes...Star Wars R2-D2 Projector.

Pentegon Keeping Secrets From the CIA

Why was Langley cut out of clandestine meetings with Iranian informants? Because the CIA would have deeper access to the facts, could contradict the intentions of the Bush administration wonks, and would likely point out seeming impropriety since burned by the Iran-Contra treason. Even if they did not do anything "wrong" they sure did not do anything right either. Do not hear this opinion as an endorsement of the CIA. It is just another example of how inept and isogetic the current administration has become once drunk with power and motivated by fear. Speak truth to power...



The Senate Intelligence Committee is about to release a report that sheds new light on "inappropriate" back-channel contacts between Pentagon officials and a group of Iranian informants—including a key figure from the Iran-contra affair.

In December 2001, two Pentagon Mideast experts—Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode—secretly traveled to Rome. They met with a group of Iranians who supposedly had information about plans by Iranian-backed terrorists to attack Americans—including U.S. troops who were then closing in on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The meetings were approved by high-level officials at the White House and the Pentagon. The CIA, however, was kept in the dark. When the CIA and the State Department found out about the meetings a few weeks later, they strenuously protested to the White House and demanded that the contacts be terminated immediately. At least officially, the White House complied.

Now, years later, the Senate Intelligence Committee is finally producing a report on its investigation of those meetings. The document is part of the panel's "phase two" investigation into the misuse of pre-Iraq War intelligence. The report is not likely to satisfy either the White House or the administration's most vocal critics. While Intelligence Committee officials are keeping details of the report under wraps, several sources familiar with its contents—who asked for anonymity discussing an unpublished report—said that congressional investigators found nothing illegal about the secret contacts. The meetings were brokered by two Iran-contra figures: Michael Ledeen, a Washington academic and prominent neoconservative activist who was close to a number of senior Bush administration officials at the time, and Manucher Ghorbanifar, a Paris-based Iranian businessman who served as a middleman for arms deals in the 1980s and was long ago branded a "fabricator" by the CIA. U.S. intelligence agencies said at the time that Ghorbanifar had a history of offering information that proved unreliable.

But in the report, the panel does conclude that senior Bush administration officials (including then deputy Defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz and deputy national-security adviser Stephen Hadley) approved the meetings without informing the CIA or its director at the time, George Tenet, thereby allowing intelligence gathering outside of normal channels. The sources say the report also suggests that Ledeen misled the National Security Council about the meetings--a charge that Ledeen strongly denied this week in an e-mail exchange with NEWSWEEK.

The Rome meetings provoked controversy when they were first disclosed in the summer of 2003. They seemed typical of the rocky relations between the Pentagon and CIA during the early years of the Bush administration. According to Ledeen, there was a reason the CIA was excluded from the secret discussions: the Iranians, he said, wanted nothing to do with the agency. That would not be surprising, given the CIA's deep antipathy toward Ghorbanifar. Three intelligence sources familiar with the investigation told NEWSWEEK that the Senate report questions whether Ledeen, who first approached administration officials about meeting with the Iranian informants, made up the claim that the Iranians refused to deal with the CIA. The report, the sources said, notes that the two Pentagon officials involved in the discussions said the issue never came up. In an e-mail to NEWSWEEK, however, Ledeen said he is sure he told senior officials who authorized the contacts—including Hadley and Zalmay Khalilzad (now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations)—that the Iranians "did not want to talk to CIA people."

According to several accounts of the Rome meetings—including one published by former CIA director Tenet in his memoir "At the Center of the Storm"—Ledeen persuaded Wolfowitz and Hadley, now White House national-security adviser, to allow him to set up the secret sessions. Only later did it emerge that the Iranian informants were in fact contacts of Ghorbanifar. (In his book, Tenet himself labeled Ghorbanifar a "con man and fabricator.") "Steve, this whole operation smells," Tenet wrote that he told Hadley after he learned about the contacts. In 2003, administration officials close to Hadley told NEWSWEEK that Hadley had become concerned that Ledeen and Ghorbanifar might be dragging the Bush administration into a repeat performance of the Iran-contra affair, and ordered that the contacts be cut off.

In an interview with NEWSWEEK in Paris in November 2003, Ghorbanifar said that despite the official cease-and-desist order, he still kept in contact with both Rhode and Franklin for months. Ghorbanifar said he told the Americans he could help them recover hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cash that, he claimed, Saddam Hussein had buried. He envisioned splitting the money with the U.S. government: the United States could use part of it to overthrow Saddam; he would use the rest to finance an effort to overthrow the clerical regime in Tehran. The scheme came to nothing.

In e-mails to NEWSWEEK, Ledeen said that the Rome meetings were productive and useful. "We obtained information on Iranian support for terror operations in Afghanistan; that information saved American lives. But the CIA and State then threw a joint tantrum and cut off all contact with proven sources of information. Go figure."

Despite the unorthodox way in which the meetings were arranged and the problematic histories of the people who arranged them, sources familiar with the congressional inquiry said investigators could not declare that the Rome contacts broke the law. The reason: even if the CIA was cut out of the meetings, it was not illegal for National Security Council officials to authorize the contacts. If the committee's criticism of the administration's performance is as mild as advance reports suggest, critics who felt the Rome meetings could unravel deeper Bush scandals about the selling of the Iraq War are likely to be disappointed.

by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball


Newsweek Web Exclusive


Updated: 6:20 PM ET May 8, 2008

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/1360840

© 2008 Newsweek, Inc.

From the Evangelical Manifesto: Christians become 'useful idiots' when faith is politicized

I think it was the prophet Carlos Mencia who often said, "Dee dee dee" to refer to such obvious idiocy. The bard Bill Engvall would agree with, "Here's your sign." All joking aside, I am glad to see that my people are starting to wake-up and reclaim their role as the brokers of honesty who speak truth to power!



DALLAS - A group of U.S. evangelical leaders called on Wednesday for a pullback from party politics so that followers would not become "useful idiots" exploited for partisan gain.

One in four U.S. adults count themselves as evangelical Protestants, giving them serious clout in a country where religion and politics often mix. Conservative evangelicals have become a key support base for the Republican Party.

But the movement has had growing pains and the statement issued on Wednesday, called an "Evangelical Manifesto," is the latest sign of emerging fractures as some activists seek to broaden its agenda beyond hot-button social issues such as opposition to abortion and gay rights.

"Christians from both sides of the political spectrum, left as well as right, have made the mistake of politicizing faith," the manifesto declares.

"That way faith loses its independence, the church becomes 'the regime at prayer,' Christians become 'useful idiots' for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form," it said.

The manifesto was signed by leading and mostly centrist evangelicals, such as Leith Anderson, president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals; Mark Bailey, president of the Dallas Theological Seminary; and evangelical academic and author David Gushee.

Many of the more than 70 signatories have been critical in the past of evangelical partisan involvement that was seen as the crucial element behind President Bush's re-election victory in 2004.

Leading figures on the conservative "Religious Right" such as Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, did not sign the document, and his office said he had not been asked to sign it.

Limited political impact
Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative Washington think tank that explores the relationship between religion and politics, said of the statement: "It's a sign of maturation of the evangelical movement ... It's an important theological document, but it will have limited political influence because it is making essentially a theological argument."

The document also highlights divisions that have been there for a while as some leading evangelicals attempt to redirect the movement's considerable energies toward areas such as action on global poverty and climate change.

Polls show growing numbers of evangelicals receptive to a wider social agenda and Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been attempting to woo them in a bid to peel some away from the Republican camp ahead of the November election showdown with John McCain.

But analysts say most are still center-right politically and polls consistently show most remain opposed to abortion rights. They are also deeply committed to their faith.

"We have a big umbrella called evangelicalism which is theological in nature. We are called to be followers of Jesus Christ and men and women of the book," said John Huffman, a pastor and chairman of the board of Christianity Today.

Huffman, who helped draft the document, told Reuters by telephone that the group wanted to bring back "civility of discourse in the public square."

Copyright 2008 Reuters.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24506486/from/ET/

© 2008 MSNBC.com

Your blog can be group therapy

Wow! There are therapeutic benefits to contributing to my blog. Flush the Effexor and Paxil and just get your doctor to write a script for Truly Jones p.r.n. no generics.



* Report: Some 12 million people have a blog; many use it for group therapy
* Experts: Blogging shouldn't replace face-to-face counseling
* Study: Men blog about politics, technology and money
* Study: Women tend to blog more about private lives

By Anna Jane Grossman

(LifeWire) -- When a 24-year-old woman who called herself "90DayJane" launched a blog in February announcing she would write about her life and feelings for three months and then commit suicide, 150,000 readers flocked to the site. Some came to offer help, some to delight in the drama. Others speculated it was all a hoax.

Few, however, questioned why she would share her deepest thoughts and feelings with strangers online. In the age of cyber-voyeurism, the better question might be: Why wouldn't she?

Overeating, alcoholism, depression -- name the problem and you'll find someone's personal blog on the subject. Roughly 12 million Americans have blogs, according to polls by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2006, and many seem to use them as a form of group therapy.

A 2005 survey by Digital Marketing Services for AOL.com a found nearly half of the 600 people polled derived therapeutic benefits from personal blogging.

'Instant support system'

For Stacey Kim, a 36-year-old book editor who lives in the Boston suburb of Arlington, Massachusetts, emotional blogging has become a reflex. On April 11, 2007, Kim curled up next to her husband and held him as he succumbed to a long battle with pancreatic cancer. The next morning, she went online to post about the experience.

"It cemented the reality that he was gone," Kim says. "I got hundreds of comments back that were all so loving and supportive. It gave me a really tangible sense of community."

She blogs about life as the widowed mother of 22-month-old twins at snickollet.blogspot.com.

"Right after he died, people kept asking if I was in therapy," says Kim, "and I'd say, 'No, but I have a blog.'"

Writing long has been considered a therapeutic outlet for people facing problems. A 2003 British Psychological Society study of 36 people suggested that writing about emotions could even speed the healing of physical wounds: Researchers found that small wounds healed more quickly in those who wrote about traumatic personal events than in those who wrote about mundane activities.

But it's the public nature of blogs that creates the sense of support.

Reading someone else's blog can be surprisingly beneficial, says MightyGirl.net blogger Margaret Mason, 32. She reads about other women's experiences with everything from in-laws to apartment-hunting at blogs like SuburbanBliss.net and SuperHeroDesigns.com.

"Blogging can create an instant support system, especially at a time when you might not have the energy or resources to seek out people who've shared your experiences," says Mason, author of "No One Cares What You Had For Lunch," a book on keeping a blog interesting.

A way to be heard

John Suler, a psychology professor at Rider University in New Jersey, has studied the overlap of psychology and cyberspace. Blog audiences are usually small, he says, but "going public with one's thoughts and experiences can be a self-affirming process."

He and other experts say blogging shouldn't replace face-to-face counseling -- although it can complement sessions when a patient shares their writing with the therapist.

"Some psychologists take special interest in any activities that their clients may undertake online," Suler says, "because such activities often reveal a lot about how they express their identity and relate to other people."

Kim did start psychotherapy, but kept blogging. "My therapist will give me little assignments and I'll blog about them," she says. "If I come home (after a session) and write about it, it solidifies it."

One Chicago licensed social worker and therapist in her 50s encourages patients to release bottled emotions through blogging. Leah, who asked that her last name not be used because of the nature of her profession, started EveryoneNeedsTherapy.blogspot.com to share professional insights.

Soon, however, she was talking about her own feelings -- and her husband told her it seemed to lift her mood.

"It's a form of group therapy," says Leah. "Not only can you express your feelings, but you can get comments, and that creates a dialogue."

Blogging about personal matters seems to be more of a feminine pursuit. In the 2004 study "Effects of Age and Gender on Blogging," researchers examined more than 37,000 blogs on blogger.com. Their conclusion: Male bloggers tend to write about politics, technology and money; women are more likely to blog about their private lives and use an intimate style of writing.

This doesn't surprise Patricia Wallace, author of "The Psychology of the Internet."

"Women tend to self-disclose more online in general," says the senior director at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth. "Women far outnumber men in certain blogging worlds in which feelings are shared, such as cancer blogs."

Permanent marks

The only problem, some bloggers find, is that many posts become passé -- yet they're on the Web forever.

"The Internet takes momentary thoughts and freezes them in amber as if they're permanent," says Scheherazade Mason, a career counselor and sailing coach at Bowdoin College in Maine. She stopped posting her deepest thoughts, but calls the experience positive.

"Through my first blog, I learned to be braver," Mason says. "I learned that my weakness was also likable. In real life, you try to show only strength and to hide your weaknesses, but I exposed everything."

90DayJane also said she learned important things. After seven days, she announced the blog was an art project and she wasn't planning to kill herself.

"I wanted this blog to be about personal discovery and truth," she wrote in her final post. "But the correspondences I have received have taught me more about those qualities than I could ever express. 90DayJane ... has changed my perspective as a human being."

LifeWire provides original and syndicated lifestyle content to Web publishers. Anna Jane Grossman is a freelance writer based in New York City.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/05/07/blog.therapy/index.html

© 2008 Cable News Network

FBI Raids Special Counsel Office, Seizes Records

It is about freaking time that our checks and balances actually worked...sheesh! FBI agents on Tuesday raid the Office of the Special Counsel, the agency that investigates whistleblower and discrimination complaints by federal employees. The FBI is examining allegations of political misconduct by agency employees.



All Things Considered, May 6, 2008

FBI agents on Tuesday raided the offices of Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch, who oversees protection for federal whistle-blowers. The agents seized computers and shut down e-mail service as part of an obstruction of justice probe, as first reported by NPR News.

A grand jury in Washington issued subpoenas for several OSC employees, including Bloch, according to NPR sources who spoke on condition their names not be used. Bloch's home was also searched.

Those developments came about on a Tuesday morning that had seemed no different from any other weekday in the Washington headquarters of the Office of Special Counsel. But at 10 a.m., the OSC's national e-mail system went down, and the FBI arrived.

A half-dozen FBI agents swarmed into the OSC's Washington offices, grabbing documents and seizing computers. By 1 p.m., more than 20 agents had arrived in the agency's D.C. bureau.

One official close to the investigation said that today's action was "significant" and that other field offices would also be included in the investigation.

The focus of the probe appears to be Special Counsel Bloch, who was appointed by President Bush in 2004. Bloch has been a controversial figure ever since taking over the Office of Special Counsel, which, among other things, ensures that federal whistle-blowers get the protection they need.

One of Bloch's first official actions was to refuse to investigate any claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation. When the news of his refusal was leaked to the press, career employees in his office say, Bloch blamed them for the leak. He retaliated, the employees said, by creating a new field office in Detroit and forcing them either to accept assignments there or resign.

This morning, FBI agents in Washington took Bloch into a separate room at OSC to interview him, while additional investigators searched his office. They also arrived at his home in Alexandria, Va., with a search warrant.

The Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been looking into allegations that Bloch retaliated against career employees and obstructed an investigation. Sources close to the probe said the FBI's raid this morning was related to work the inspector general had already done.

In addition to concerns about obstruction of justice, investigators are also looking into whether Bloch violated the Hatch Act, a congressional mandate that prohibits employees from using their offices for partisan political purposes.

Bloch has admitted to hiring Geeks on Call — a computer servicing company — to purge his computer and two of his deputies' computers, sources said. But he said the computers contained a virus, which necessitated a purge. Investigators are looking into whether the purge was meant to destroy evidence related to the current investigation.

OSC employees for months have called on President Bush to ask for Bloch's resignation. The White House today declined to comment on the developments, as did Bloch's lawyers and the FBI.


by Ari Shapiro

Copyright 2008 NPR

Fuzzy math on the campaign trail

The candidates say they will pay for their proposals by raising revenue and cutting spending. Here are just a few of the accounting flaws in their platforms.



NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It's a good thing they're not running for accountant in chief.

When it comes to selling their economic proposals as fiscally responsible, all three presidential candidates have managed to do some funny math.

"Everybody says, let's make the numbers work by not counting certain things," said Howard Gleickman, editor of Tax Vox, a blog by think-tank Tax Policy Center.

Of course,a campaign is more about proposing new ideas than it is crafting the federal balance sheet with an X-Acto Knife. Nevertheless, none of the candidates are immune from double-counting money they say could pay for one or another of their proposals, or proposing cost-saving measures that are tough to quantify.

And they're happy to call each other out on it.

Speaking Sundayon "Meet the Press," Democrat Barack Obama criticized rival Hillary Clinton's plan to pay for her gas tax holiday proposal. "Sen. Clinton says that she's going to use the windfall profits tax. [S]he's already said that she's going to use the windfall profits tax for something else, as I have, and that is to invest in clean energy and other important measures. So that money, she's already spending twice."

The reality: It's not clear how much revenue either candidate's windfall profits tax would raise.

"It depends on how it is structured and what future oil prices are," said Gilbert Metcalf, an economics professor at Tufts University who specializes in taxation, energy and environmental economics. "For what it's worth, the previous windfall profits tax consistently raised less revenue than was predicted," he added.

The Clinton campaign gives as good as it gets. For example, Clinton economic adviser Gene Sperling, in a conversation with CNNMoney.com earlier this year, took the Obama campaign to task for proposing that money saved by drawing down troops in Iraq could be used to pay for some of Obama's proposals. That's money that should be considered emergency spending, Sperling said.

"When Iraq spending goes away, it goes away. You don't use it as a pay-for," he said. "We're assuming that will bring the budget down."

Spread the wealth

Both Democratic candidates, meanwhile, frequently cite their plans to let the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 expire for high-income taxpayers as a way to pay for their initiatives.

The tax cuts are set to expire for everyone by 2011. By letting them expire for only high-income taxpayers would over 10 years capture $1.2 trillion in federal revenue, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Such revenue certainly could go a long way toward paying for Clinton's health care reform - estimated to cost $110 billion a year - or to Obama's health care proposals - estimated to cost $50 billion to $65 billion.

Or it could pay for several of the new income, payroll, savings, education or housing tax credits that both Obama and Clinton have proposed.

Or it could help pay for a permanent fix to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), a move that would reduce revenue by at least $620 billion over 10 years.

But it can't do it all.

Cut spending, save billions

Clinton and Obama don't rely exclusively on high-income taxpayers to pay for their new ideas. But some of their other cost-saving measures, such as modernizing the health system and reducing wasteful health spending, are not easily quantifiable.

On the Republican side of the ledger, John McCain wants to make permanent all of President Bush's tax cuts and eliminate the AMT altogether. The Tax Policy Center estimates both measures combined could reduce federal tax revenue by nearly $4 trillion over 10 years.

McCain's economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, disputes how the center calculates its estimates.

Here's his beef: The Tax Policy Center estimates make two key assumptions - the tax cuts will expire by 2011 and the AMT will hit an increasing number of taxpayers. While that reflects current law, Holtz-Eakin asserts such estimates should be based on the policies in effect now.

"[T]he AMT gets patched [to protect taxpayers] every year - regardless of which party holds power in Congress - but a current law baseline assumes that it will revert to its full-blown form in the future," Holtz-Eakin wrote in a rebuttal to the Tax Policy Center's estimates.

If we did that, Gleickman said, the baseline would also have to reflect other current and expensive policies like the war in Iraq, where McCain has called for an increase of troops.

McCain's critics say his proposals are too costly .

His campaign asserts that his call to extend the tax cuts for everyone and reduce corporate tax rates will stimulate economic growth and maintain a healthy level of tax revenue. But studies - including one by Holtz-Eakin in his capacity as Congressional Budget Office director in 2005 - suggest that tax cuts don't pay for themselves over time.

McCain is also relying on spending cuts to address long-term budgetary concerns. Specifically, he's called for the elimination of earmarks and discretionary programs that don't meet their objectives. And when it comes to shoring up funding for Social Security, he has expressed a preference to reduce growth in benefits.

Those ventures may save a lot of money or not much at all. Everything depends on what McCain could get through Congress. And so far, no presidential candidate has spent a lot of stump time proposing how to do that.

By Jeanne Sahadi

CNNMoney.com senior writer

First Published: May 6, 2008: 12:35 PM EDT

Find this article at:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/06/news/economy/pay_for_plans/index.htm?cnn=yes

© 2008 Cable News Network LP, LLP.

If reason and common sense do not influence her, then what kind of president would Senator Clinton be?!

'Unbelievable' sportsmanship in softball game

Wow! This is one of the most classy acts of sportsmanship that I have ever heard of. The coaches and the parents of these ladies should be swelling with pride!


(click image for YouTube story)

PORTLAND, Ore. - With two runners on base and a strike against her, Sara Tucholsky of Western Oregon University uncorked her best swing and did something she had never done, in high school or college. Her first home run cleared the center-field fence.

But it appeared to be the shortest of dreams come true when she missed first base, started back to tag it and collapsed with a knee injury.

She crawled back to first but could do no more. The first-base coach said she would be called out if her teammates tried to help her. Or, the umpire said, a pinch runner could be called in, and the homer would count as a single.

Then, members of the Central Washington University softball team stunned spectators by carrying Tucholsky around the bases Saturday so the three-run homer would count — an act that contributed to their own elimination from the playoffs.

Central Washington first baseman Mallory Holtman, the career home run leader in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, asked the umpire if she and her teammates could help Tucholsky.

The umpire said there was no rule against it.

So Holtman and shortstop Liz Wallace put their arms under Tucholsky’s legs, and she put her arms over their shoulders. The three headed around the base paths, stopping to let Tucholsky touch each base with her good leg.

“The only thing I remember is that Mallory asked me which leg was the one that hurt,” Tucholsky said. “I told her it was my right leg and she said, ‘OK, we’re going to drop you down gently and you need to touch it with your left leg,’ and I said ‘OK, thank you very much.”’

“She said, ‘You deserve it, you hit it over the fence,’ and we all kind of just laughed.”

“We started laughing when we touched second base,” Holtman said. “I said, ’I wonder what this must look like to other people.”’

“We didn’t know that she was a senior or that this was her first home run,” Wallace said Wednesday. “That makes the story more touching than it was. We just wanted to help her.”

Holtman said she and Wallace weren’t thinking about the playoff spot, and didn’t consider the gesture something others wouldn’t do.

As for Tucholsky, the 5-foot-2 right fielder was focused on her pain.

“I really didn’t say too much. I was trying to breathe,” she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday.

“I didn’t realize what was going on until I had time to sit down and let the pain relax a little bit,” she said. “Then I realized the extent of what I actually did.”

“I hope I would do the same for her in the same situation,” Tucholsky added.

As the trio reached home plate, Tucholsky said, the entire Western Oregon team was in tears.

Central Washington coach Gary Frederick, a 14-year coaching veteran, called the act of sportsmanship “unbelievable.”

For Western Oregon coach Pam Knox, the gesture resolved the dilemma Tucholsky’s injury presented.

“She was going to kill me if we sub and take (the home run) away. But at the same time I was concerned for her. I didn’t know what to do,” Knox said.

Tucholsky’s injury is a possible torn ligament that will sideline her for the rest of the season, and she plans to graduate in the spring with a degree in business. Her home run sent Western Oregon to a 4-2 victory, ending Central Washington’s chances of winning the conference and advancing to the playoffs.

“In the end, it is not about winning and losing so much,” Holtman said. “It was about this girl. She hit it over the fence and was in pain, and she deserved a home run.”

The Associated Press
updated 3:42 p.m. CT, Wed., April. 30, 2008

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Story URL: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/24392612/

Video URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZfUvdKDG1E

© 2008 NBCSports.com

Denomination Wrestles With Pastor’s Statements

Article Published May 3, 2008 by The New York Times

By NEELA BANERJEE

Just as Senator Barack Obama has spent this week trying to stem the damage to his campaign from statements by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., the small, theologically liberal Protestant denomination both men belong to, the United Church of Christ, has been grappling with the impact of the controversy upon its members.

On Thursday, the Rev. John H. Thomas, the denomination’s president, posted an open letter on the United Church of Christ’s Web site acknowledging that members have been dealing with “the same broad set of emotions and frustrations that have been expressed nationwide in recent days and weeks.”

Mr. Thomas said he had heard concern from members about the well-being of the church and its congregations.

“While there is high regard for Reverend Wright’s ministry and leadership at Trinity U.C.C. in Chicago during the past 36 years, and for his prophetic, scriptural preaching,” Mr. Thomas wrote, “many of us today are troubled by some of his controversial comments and the substance and manner in which they have been communicated, both by him and as characterized by the media.”

The letter responds, in part, to e-mail and calls to the denomination’s main office in Cleveland about Mr. Wright’s comments, a flow that has picked up since his talk at the National Press Club on Monday, said the Rev. J. Bennett Guess, a spokesman for the denomination.

Other United Church of Christ ministers said Mr. Thomas, who is in South America, had no choice but to issue a statement, given how the continuing controversy has thrust the denomination of 1.4 million members into the spotlight.

“His statement indicates there is a high level of anxiety,” said the Rev. Madison Shockley, pastor of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad, Calif., “and it’s important for the body of the church to know that the leadership hears them.”

In comments on the United Church of Christ’s Web site, people have called for the expulsion from the denomination of Mr. Wright and the church he led until he retired in February, a move that experts said was highly unlikely. More often, visitors to the site have debated whether Mr. Wright’s comments were laudable or lamentable.

“The U.C.C. has got to come out against Wright. This is embarrassing. Even Obama is denouncing him,” Matthew Thompson, who said he had a master’s degree in theology, wrote on the Web site. “It is clear that Wright is soap-boxing for his own promotion and is making a joke of progressive Christianity.”

The United Church of Christ, made up in part of churches descended from the Puritan congregations, takes pride in its liberalism, and it has been among the first Protestant denominations to ordain women and gay men and has been a leader on civil rights issues. The denomination is overwhelmingly white, although Mr. Wright’s former church, Trinity United Church of Christ, which is mostly African-American, is its largest congregation.

The denomination emphasizes “the freedom of the congregation and the freedom of the pulpit,” said the Rev. Randi Walker, a United Church of Christ minister and an assistant professor at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.

Ministers said they heard in Mr. Wright’s language “the same kind of passion and hyperbole as the Hebrew prophets,” said the Rev. Richard Wagoner of Union Congregational Church, a United Church of Christ church in St. Louis Park, Minn. Clergy members have cited the prophet Amos, who cursed all the nations, saving his harshest words for his own.

But many congregants heard something different, Mr. Wagoner said, and were angry about Mr. Wright’s sermons. After his speech at the National Press Club, more frustration surfaced.

“Many in our congregation are resonating with Obama’s talk of raising the discourse and that sort of idealism, and Jeremiah Wright’s comments have pulled the level of discourse down,” Mr. Wagoner said. “People are angry at the effect it is having on Obama’s campaign. And they are angry at having to revisit the race issue.”

Clergy members say some good may come out of the controversy, including a deeper conversation on race.

“When you have diversity, you’re going to have conflict — that is the price of diversity,” said the Rev. Joseph C. Hough Jr., president of Union Theological Seminary in New York. “The challenge is to recognize conflict and open windows of reconciliation.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Poll: More disapprove of Bush than any other president

Well duh?!



* President Bush's disapproval rating hits all-time high in polling
* More than 70 percent disapprove in CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll
* Survey indicates support for Iraq war has never been lower
* Low approval numbers come five years after "Mission Accomplished" moment

WASHINGTON DC (CNN) -- A new poll suggests that President Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush is handling his job as president.

"No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup Poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president's disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark," said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director.

"Bush's approval rating, which stands at 28 percent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon [22 percent and 24 percent, respectively], but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s," Holland said. "The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, 67 percent disapproval in January 1952."

While Gallup polling goes back to the 1930s, it wasn't until the Truman years that they began surveying monthly approval ratings.

CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider adds, "He is more unpopular than Richard Nixon was just before he resigned from the presidency in August 1974."

President Nixon's disapproval rating in August 1974 stood at 66 percent

The poll also indicates that support for the war in Iraq has never been lower. Thirty percent of those questioned favored the war, while 68 percent opposed it.

"Americans are growing more pessimistic about the war," Holland said. "In January, nearly half believed that things were going well for the U.S. in Iraq; now that figure has dropped to 39 percent."

The numbers on the Iraq war come on the five-year anniversary of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" moment on board the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, when he proclaimed that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

The record-low support for the war in a CNN poll could be one reason behind the president's unpopularity, but it probably is not the only one.

"Support for the war, the assessment of the economy and approval of Mr. Bush are all about the same -- bad," Schneider said.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted by telephone from Monday through Wednesday among 1,008 adult Americans.

The poll's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

By Paul Steinhauser

CNN Deputy Political Director

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/01/bush.poll/index.html

© 2008 Cable News Network