jamotto

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Spc. Jeff LeBrun, 21, from Buffalo, N.Y., died Jan. 1 in Baghdad, Iraq, when his military vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device. LeBrun was assigned to the ArmyÔÇÖs 2nd Battalion, 15th Field Artillery Regiment, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), Fort Drum, N.Y.Link May you rest in peace...

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sgt. Damien T. Ficek, 26, from Pullman, Wash., died Dec. 30 in Baghdad, Iraq, when his patrol was attacked by enemy forces using small arms fire. Ficek was assigned to the Army National GuardÔÇÖs 1st Battalion, 161st Infantry Regiment, Spokane, Wash.Link May you rest in peace...

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sgt. 1st Class Pedro A. Munoz, 47, of Aquada, Puerto Rico, died Jan. 2 in Shindand, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained Jan. 1 when his patrol encountered enemy fire. Munoz was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group, Fort Bragg, N.C.Link May you rest in peace...

Link quote:By CORALIE CARLSON, Associated Press Writer MIAMI - Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress and an outspoken advocate for women and minorities during seven terms in the House, died near Daytona Beach, friends said Sunday. She was 80. "She was our Moses that opened the Red Sea for us," Robert E. Williams, president of the NAACP in Flagler County, told The Associated Press late Sunday. He did not have the details of her death on Saturday. Chisholm, who was raised in a predominantly black New York City neighborhood and was elected to the U.S. House in 1968, was a riveting speaker who often criticized Congress as being too clubby and unresponsive. "My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn't always discuss for reasons of political expediency," she told voters. She went to Congress to represent New York the same year Richard Nixon was elected to the White House and served until two years into Ronald Reagan tenure as president. She also was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1969. "Anyone that came in contact with her, they had a feeling of a careness, and they felt that she was very much a part of each individual as she represented her district," William Howard, her longtime campaign treasurer, said Sunday. Newly elected, she was assigned to the House Agriculture Committee, which she felt was irrelevant to her urban constituency. In an unheard of move, she demanded reassignment and got switched to the Veterans Affairs Committee. Not long afterward she voted for Hale Boggs, who was white, over John Conyers, who was black, for majority leader. Boggs rewarded her with a place on the prized Education and Labor Committee and she was its third ranking member when she left. She ran for the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1972. When rival candidate and ideological opposite George Wallace was shot, she visited him in the hospital ÔÇö an act that appalled her followers. "He said, `What are your people going to say?' I said: `I know what they're going to say. But I wouldn't want what happened to you to happen to anyone.' He cried and cried," she recalled. And when she needed support to extend the minimum wage to domestic workers two years later, it was Wallace who got her the votes from Southern members of Congress. Pragmatism and power were watchwords. "Women have learned to flex their political muscles. You got to flex that muscle to get what you want," she said during her presidential campaign. When Bella Abzug challenged Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the 1976 Democratic Senate primary, Chisholm caused a stir by backing Moynihan. "Where was Abzug when I ran for president?" she asked, when questioned about her choice. In her book, "Unbought and Unbossed," she recounted the campaign that brought her to Congress and wrote of her concerns about that body: "Our representative democracy is not working because the Congress that is supposed to represent the voters does not respond to their needs. I believe the chief reason for this is that it is ruled by a small group of old men." The Rev. Jesse Jackson called Chisholm a "woman of great courage." "She was an activist and she never stopped fighting," Jackson said from Ohio, where he is set to lead a rally on Monday in Columbus. "She refused to accept the ordinary, and she had high expectations for herself and all people around her." Chisholm's leadership traits were recognized by her parents early on, she recalled. Born Shirley St. Hill in New York City on Nov. 30, 1924, she was the eldest of four daughters of a Guyanese father and a Barbadian mother. Her father, an unskilled laborer in a burlap bag factory, and her mother, a domestic, scrimped to educate their children. At age 3, Shirley was sent to live on her grandmother's farm in Barbados. She attended British grammar school and picked up the clipped Caribbean accent that marked her speech. She moved back to New York when she was 11 and went on to graduate cum laude from Brooklyn College and earn a master's degree from Columbia University. She started her career as director of a day care center, and later served as an educational consultant with the city's Bureau of Child Welfare. She became active in local Democratic politics and ran successfully for the state Assembly in 1964. She was an Assemblywoman from 1964 to 1968 before besting James Farmer, the former national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, to gain the House seat. "I am the people's politician," she said at the time. "If the day should ever come when the people can't save me, I'll know I'm finished." When she left 14 years later, she complained that many of her constituents misunderstood her, that she was a "pragmatic politician" whose influence was waning in conservative times. And she said she wanted more time for her family life. After leaving Congress, Chisholm was named to the Purington Chair at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., where she taught for four years. In later years she was a sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit. "She was a tremendous leader and a voice in politics when she was in office, as well as when she left office," Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields told the AP. Chisholm was married twice. Her 1949 marriage to Conrad Chisholm ended in divorce in February, 1977. Later that year she married Arthur Hardwick, Jr. She had no children. Hardwick died in 1986. "Whether you agree with her politics or not, she had a moral compass and was an advocate for the underdog," said Shola Lynch, director of "Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed," a documentary on her 1972 presidential campaign. Once discussing what her legacy might be, Chisholm commented, "I'd like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That's how I'd like to be remembered."

Link quote:By David Kelly Times Staff Writer DENVER  Every hour is happy hour at Modern Drunkard magazine. It's barely 3 p.m., and Frank Kelly Rich, who edits the bimonthly homage to getting soused, is draining his gin and tonic and eyeing a whiskey bottle on the top shelf. Moments later, he's drinking that as well. A huge bar dominates the office, the fridge is stocked with beer and the handful of employees is invited to drink. Smoking is OK too. As the booze flows, Rich, 41, extols the virtues of alcohol, calling it a boon to mankind while claiming that drunks are an "oppressed minority." Nothing can knock him off message. What about cirrhosis of the liver? "There's a tidal wave of new evidence that drinking is actually good for you," he insists. What of alcohol's effect on families? "I think drinking is conducive to a happy family life," he counters. Rich lights a cigarette and smiles as the ice melts in his cocktail. His downtown Denver office is decorated with posters of Dean Martin, Jackie Gleason and other famous tipplers of yesteryear. "The most accomplished people have been drinkers. Hemingway was a great literary drunk, and I think a lot of teetotalers would trade their lives for his in a second," he said. "Alcohol is the great socializer. Can you imagine a world without it? Well, I guess you can  it's called the Middle East." Modern Drunkard is an irreverent, 50,000-circulation glossy magazine full of pinup girls and macho men alongside articles on drinking, getting drunk and hiding a hangover from "the Man," i.e., the boss. It also includes serious examinations of liquor, biographies of history's great drunks and selected odes to the drinking life. The magazine sells for $4.50 in bookstores across the U.S. and Europe, and free copies are available in many bars. A recent issue included the feature "You know you're a drunkard when  (you fall down a well and send Lassie to the liquor store)"; a dictionary of bar slang: "pal tax n.  the act of covertly ordering a drink on a friend's tab"; and a story titled "Booze is My Copilot," on how drinking cured one man's fear of flying. Rich revels in the retrograde excess of his magazine. The way he sees it, reality is so awful, why not get drunk? "People always say, 'If you drink, your problems will still be there in the morning,' " he said. "That's like telling a guy going to the Bahamas that in a week, he'll be right back where he started. Well, for a week, he'll be gone." Those in the business of battling alcohol abuse find such sentiments appalling. "Drinking at the level they promote and saying it's good for you is baloney," said Sam Zakhari of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Md. "Some people benefit from moderate drinking  one drink a day for a woman, two for a man  but you can achieve the same result through good nutrition and exercise." Rich shrugs off the naysayers and routinely savages groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, whom he sees as neo-prohibitionist killjoys secretly bent on banning alcohol. "We don't advocate drinking and driving; that's a dumb thing to do," he said. "But they have gone too far." MADD National President Wendy Hamilton says her group is anti-drunk driving, not anti-alcohol. She calls Modern Drunkard "just plain stupid." "We don't preach abstinence from alcohol unless you are under 21," said Hamilton, whose sister and nephew were killed by a drunk driver. "If our role in life is to make a better world, then I cannot figure out how this magazine makes the world a better place to live." Raised in Las Vegas, where his dad drove a cab, Rich says he started drinking while in the Army. After being discharged, he headed to Europe  seeking a romantic life of writing and drinking. He spent four years in pub-friendly London. "If you want to learn about a new culture," he advised, "don't go to museums, go to the bars." Rich returned to the United States and wrote "Jake Strait Bogeyman." He lived out of his Pinto in Los Angeles, trying to sell the futuristic action novel. "When you're homeless under foreign skies, you feel like Hemingway; when you're homeless in your own country, you feel like a loser," he said. The book spawned a four-part series and eventually earned him $150,000. He took the money and drove around the country before ending up in Denver eight years ago. "I immediately recognized it as a great drinking town," he said. In fact, Men's Health magazine this year listed the city as the most "intoxicated" in the country  based on numbers of alcohol-related accidents and deaths due to alcoholism. Denver Mayor John W. Hickenlooper owns seven bars, and Republican Pete Coors, whose beer factory sprawls just outside the city, made an unsuccessful run for the Senate in November. Rich wanted to start a magazine, and he wanted it to be about the subject he knew best. "The magazine was going to be about drinking and only about drinking  and not just drinking, but heavy drinking," he said, pouring another whiskey. "I was going to distill every bit of alcoholic knowledge in the world and put it in one magazine." He published his first edition in 1996 for about $500, inserting fake ads from beer companies to make it look professional. He paid alcoholics living on the streets $20 for boozing advice. With the magazine now making money thanks to copious bar and club ads, he's hired five staffers and 20 part-time contributors. Rich is also writing "The Modern Drunkard Manifesto" coming out in November, published by Riverhead Books. A Modern Drunkard convention is planned for Denver in May. His wife Christa, 27, is a bartender who helps edit the magazine. They have no children. "When you find your calling, you have to go with it," she said of her husband's career. "I get e-mails all the time from people in Alcoholics Anonymous who say they want a subscription because it lets them remember what life was like when they drank." Rich freely admits he's an alcoholic and frequently blacks out. Regular exercise and vitamins, he said, keep him fit. "I drink about eight drinks a day and maybe 30 on a heavy day," he said cheerfully. "But as long as I remain healthy and happy, I have no intention of slowing down. I mean, when you have something good going, you stick with it, right?"

Happy New Year!!

Tsunami Toll 125,000, Huge Relief Effort Mobilized quote:By Tomi Soetjipto and Dean Yates BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) - Asia's tsunami death toll soared above 125,000 on Friday as millions struggled to find food and clean water and the world mobilized for what is shaping up to be the biggest relief effort in history. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites), calling the disaster that has displaced 5 million people "an unprecedented global catastrophe and it requires an unprecedented global response," said a half-billion dollars had been pledged so far. Aid agencies warned a second wave of death from contagious diseases could wash across Indian Ocean areas devastated by Sunday's tsunami. Workers in south India sprayed streets to ward off cholera. "The worst is yet to come, I am afraid, because of the breakdown of sanitation facilities," said Dr. Robert Edelman, a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland. Desperate crowds in Indonesia, their faces coverd with masks or handkerchiefs against disease, besieged aid workers delivering food and clamoured for petrol for their vehicles. Aircraft dropped supplies to nearly obliterated towns in Sumatra, an island the size of Florida. The tragedy that has touched all corners of the globe is ushering in a somber New Year's Eve. Some 5,000 foreign tourists, mostly Europeans at popular Indian Ocean resorts, are missing and hopes are dimming they will be found alive. A Red Cross Web site in Geneva to aid anxious relatives locate survivors partially crashed after being overhwhelmed by 650,000 hits in the first 24 hours. Dozens of aftershocks have unnerved the traumatised survivors after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake, the strongest in 40 years, sent an unprecedented tsunami rolling from Indonesia to Africa. After one such aftershock on Thursday, the Indian government issued a tsunami alert that sent residents fleeing in panic and halted aid distribution in towns in Tamil Nadu. "I don't know how often this (tsunami) will happen but it has suddenly made our lives uncertain," said Apparachi Ashokan, a fisherman at Devanampatti village near Cuddalore town, 170 km (100 miles) south of Madras. "We have to live here to be able to fish but that would mean risking mine and my family's life," he said as dozens of funeral pyres lit up Tamil Nadu's ruined beaches at dusk on Thursday. Residents in worst-hit Banda Aceh on the Indonesian island of Sumatra bolted from their homes for a second night in a row after aftershocks late Thursday night. A tragedy of biblical proportions is bringing together the mostly poor countries along the Indian Ocean rim and their rich counterparts in the West. People across the world opened their hearts and wallets to give millions of dollars to victims, jamming phone lines and web sites and in some cases outpacing their own governments in their generosity. The Paris Club group of creditors is to examine a debt moratorium for disaster-struck countries, a source close to the Club said. President Bush, criticized for a slow reaction to disaster, said he would send a delegation led by Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) to the region on Sunday to assess the need for U.S. assistance. Bush has pledged $35 million so far. The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and a flotilla of ships is steaming to Thailand to set up a base to coordinate aid for the region. Analysts estimated damages from the disaster at about $14 billion, but that does not include potential losses of business and productivity. Some are cutting economic growth estimates for the hardest-hit countries. Getting aid to the survivors is the big problem, with many roads washed out, petrol stations not operating and poor coordination among the military, aid groups and governments. Many villages and resorts from Thailand to Indonesia are now mud-covered rubble, blanketed with the stench of corpses. Indonesia's Health Ministry said just under 80,000 people had died in the northern Aceh province that was close to the undersea quake, some 28,000 more than previously announced. Food and medical supplies were stacking up at the airport in the provincial capital Banda Aceh on Friday. Hundreds of people lined up with Jerry cans at the few working petrol pumps guarded by police with automatic weapons. "The police are there, otherwise there would be violence," said Zezi Afrizal, 26, a food vendor. "Tell the world we need more fuel." Only a few trucks could be seen bringing food into town. Handwritten signs tacked up on utiltity poles and fences across the city pleaded: "Please help. Give us aid." David Nabarro, head of a World Health Organization crisis team, said as many as 5 million people were now unable to obtain the minimum they needed to live. Many of them, like Jackson, a 75-year-old farmer on India's remote Nicobar island, are now refugees. "We are still terrified of the water and the thought of returning to the place where we lost everything," he said at a refugee camp in Port Blair. "But that island is still the only home I know and I would rather go back soon and die peacefully there than live as a refugee."

Link quote:By KEN MAGUIRE, Associated Press Writer BOSTON - A judge denied a 94-year-old woman's attempt to force the Massachusetts Lottery Commission to pay her entire $5.6 million winnings up front on grounds she otherwise won't live long enough to collect it all. The ruling means the commission can pay Louise Outing, a retired waitress, in installments over 20 years worth about $200,000 annually after taxes. "I expected that," Outing said Thursday following the ruling. "I'll make out some kind of way." Superior Court Justice Barbara A. Dortch-Okara said Outing, of Everett, was not harmed by the commission's disbursement rules because she can obtain the lump sum elsewhere. Lottery winners are allowed to "assign" their winnings to a state-approved financial company that makes the full payment ÔÇö but only in return for a percentage of the total winnings. Outing's lawyer, James Dilday, said that's an option if they decide not to appeal. He maintained the rules give lottery officials discretion to authorize a lump-sum payment. Outing, who won a Megabucks drawing in September, has seven grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren, and six great-great-grandchildren. "I'd like to get it and do what I want with it," she said. "I'm not going to live 20 years. I'll be 95 in March." Lottery Executive Director Joseph Sullivan said all players are held to the same rules, which are printed on the back of Megabucks tickets. After an initial gross payment of $283,770, Outing would be paid 19 annual gross checks of $280,000. That's about $197,000 after taxes.

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Pfc. Oscar Sanchez, 19, from Modesto, Calif., died Dec. 29 in Mosul, Iraq, when a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device struck his observation post. Sanchez was assigned to 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), Fort Lewis, Wash.Link May you rest in peace...

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Staff Sgt. Nathaniel J. Nyren, 31, from Reston, Va., died in Baghdad, Iraq on Dec. 28, when a civilian vehicle struck his military vehicle. Nyren was assigned to the ArmyÔÇÖs 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division in Fort Hood, Texas.Link May you rest in peace...

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of a sailor who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Navy Seaman Pablito Pena Briones, Jr., 22, of Anaheim, Calf., died Dec. 28 of a non-hostile gun shot wound in Fallujah, Iraq. Briones was assigned to 1st Marine Division Detachment, Naval Medical Center San Diego. The incident is under investigationLink May you rest in peace...

Parsec not real sure if this is vapour ware or not.

Link quote:In early November, Israeli developer Majorem suspended further work on its massive multiplayer strategy game Ballerium due to the collapse of Majorem's only client, and consequent lack of funds. Now it has been picked up by Interplay who signed an exclusive agreement with Majorem to publish and distribute Ballerium, which is currently in beta testing, and is expected to launch by summer 2005. Ballerium is a massive multiplayer strategy game over the Internet, based on an original parallel world, having its own history, society, and rules.In Ballerium, either individual players or clans had to try to build a gate which provided an escape from the declining world. Ballerium featured a unique and flexible social model, sophisticated and realistic economy & market mechanism and an effective diplomacy system that generated player-handled authority.

Well GT looks good, and The Movies is an interesting idea, neither I think will be forgettable.

Group: Bodies Pose No Threat of Outbreaks

I found this article. It was an interesting read. ROGER BALDWIN: FOUNDER, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION 1884-1981

quote:As 2004 comes to a close, it's hard to be disappointed with the past 12 month's selection of games. It's been a great year for all platforms and all genres -- and 2005 looks to be even better. Here's a quick run-down of just a few of the most exciting releases the year should see...Link

Link quote:By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer NEW YORK - Susan Sontag, the author, activist and self-defined "zealot of seriousness" whose voracious mind and provocative prose made her a leading intellectual of the past half century, died Tuesday. She was 71. Sontag died at 7:10 a.m. Tuesday, said Esther Carver, a spokeswoman for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. The hospital declined to release a cause of death. Sontag had been treated for breast cancer in the 1970s. Sontag called herself a "besotted aesthete," an "obsessed moralist" and a "zealot of seriousness." Tall and commanding, her very presence suggested grand, passionate drama: eyes the richest brown; thick, black hair accented by a bolt of white; the voice deep and assured; her expression a severe stare or a wry smile, as if amused by a joke only she could tell. She wrote a best-selling historical novel, "The Volcano Lover," and in 2000 won the National Book Award for the historical novel "In America." But her greatest literary impact was as an essayist. The 1964 piece "Notes on Camp," which established her as a major new writer, popularized the "so bad it's good" attitude toward popular culture, applicable to everything from "Swan Lake" to feather boas. In "Against Interpretation," this most analytical of writers worried that critical analysis interfered with art's "incantatory, magical" power. She also wrote such influential works as "Illness as Metaphor," in which she examined how disease had been alternately romanticized and demonized, and "On Photography," in which she argued pictures sometimes distance viewers from the subject matter. "On Photography" received a National Book Critics Circle award in 1978. "Regarding the Pain of Others," a partial refutation of "On Photography," was an NBCC finalist in 2004. She had an insatiable passion for literature, with thousands of books ÔÇö arranged by chronology and language ÔÇö occupying her Chelsea apartment in Manhattan. She read authors from all over the world and is credited with introducing such European intellectuals as Roland Barthes and Elias Canetti to American readers. "I know of no other intellectual who is so clear-minded with a capacity to link, to connect, to relate," Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican novelist, once said. "She is unique." Unlike many American writers, she was deeply involved in politics, even after the 1960s. From 1987-89, Sontag served as president of American chapter of the writers organization PEN. When the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for Salman Rushdie's death because of the alleged blasphemy of "The Satanic Verses," she helped lead protests in the literary community. Sontag campaigned relentlessly for human rights and throughout the 1990s traveled to the region of Yugoslavia, calling for international action against the growing civil war. In 1993, she visited Sarajevo and staged a production of "Waiting for Godot." The daughter of a fur trader, she was born Susan Rosenblatt in New York in 1933, and also spent her early years in Tucson, Ariz., and Los Angeles. Her mother was an alcoholic; her father died when she was 5. Her mother later married an Army officer, Capt. Nathan Sontag. Susan Sontag remembered her childhood as "one long prison sentence." She skipped three grades and graduated from high school at 15; the principal told her she was wasting her time there. Her mother, meanwhile, warned if she did not stop reading she would never marry. Her mother was wrong. At the University of Chicago, she attended a lecture by Philip Rieff, a social psychologist and historian. They were married 10 days later. She was 17, he 28. "He was passionate, he was bookish, he was pure," she later said of him. By the mid-1960s, she and Rieff were divorced (they had a son, David, born in 1952), and Sontag had emerged in New York's literary society. She was known for her essays, but also wrote fiction, although not so successfully at first. "Death Kit" and "The Benefactor" were experimental novels few found worth getting through. "Unfortunately, Miss Sontag's intelligence is still greater than her talent," Gore Vidal wrote in a 1967 review of "Death Kit." "Yet ... once she has freed herself of literature, she will have the power to make it, and there are not many American writers one can say that of." Her fiction became more accessible. She wrote an acclaimed short story about AIDS (news - web sites), "The Way We Live Now," and a best-selling novel, "The Volcano Lover," about Lord Nelson and his mistress Lady Hamilton. In 2000, her novel "In America," about the 19th-century Polish actress Helena Modjeska, was a commercial disappointment and was criticized for the uncredited use of material from fiction and nonfiction sources. Nonetheless, Sontag won the National Book Award. Sontag's work also included making the films "Duet For Cannibals" and "Brother Carl" and writing the play "Alice in Bed," based on the life of Alice James, the ailing sister of Henry and William James. Sontag appeared as herself in Woody Allen (news)'s mock documentary, "Zelig." In 1999 she wrote an essay for "Women," a compilation of portraits by her longtime companion, photographer Annie Leibovitz. Sontag did not practice the art of restrained discourse. Writing in the 1960s about the Vietnam War she declared "the white race is the cancer of human history." Days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, she criticized U.S. foreign policy and offered backhanded praise for the hijackers. "Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a `cowardly' attack on `civilization' or `liberty' or `humanity' or `the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?" she wrote in The New Yorker. "In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards." Even among sympathetic souls, she found reason to contend. At a 1998 dinner, she was one of three given a Writers For Writers Award for contributions to others in the field. Sontag spoke after fellow guest of honor E.L. Doctorow, who urged writers to treat each other as "colleagues" and worried about the isolation of what he called "print culture." "I agree with Mr. Doctorow that we are all colleagues, but there are perhaps too many of us," Sontag stated. "Nobody has to be a writer. Print culture may be under siege, but there has been an enormous inflation in the number of books printed, and very few of these could be considered part of literature. ... Unlike what has been said here before, for me the primary obligation is human solidarity."

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Staff Sgt. Todd D. Olson, 36, from Loyal, Wis., died Dec. 27 in the 67th Combat Support Hospital in Tikrit, Iraq from wounds sustained in Samarra, Iraq on Dec. 26, when an improvised explosive device detonated. Olson was assigned to the National GuardÔÇÖs 1st Battalion, 128th Infantry Regiment, Neillsville, Wis.Link May you rest in peace...

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of three Marines who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Lance Cpl. Eric Hillenburg, 21, of Marion, Ind. Lance Cpl. James R. Phillips, 21, of Hillsboro, Fla. Cpl. Raleigh C. Smith, 21, of Lincoln, Mont. All three Marines died Dec. 23 as result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. They were assigned to 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif.Link May you rest in peace...

quote:The Department of Defense announced today the death of a sailor who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Chief Joel Egan Baldwin, 37, of Arlington, Va., died in Mosul, Iraq on Dec. 21, when the dining facility was attacked. Baldwin was assigned to Navy Mobile Construction Battalion 77, Gulfport, Miss.Link May you rest in peace...

Link quote:By LAURA MECKLER, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Films teaching Cold War children to "duck and cover" and describing how Oskar Schindler saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust are being added to the National Film Registry. Also being preserved: Elvis Presley and Rin Tin Tin. They are among 25 films selected by the Library of Congress (news - web sites) to the registry, which now holds 400 pictures. Also on this year's list: movies starring Popeye the Sailor Man, Our Gang, Ginger Rodgers and Fred Astaire (news). Librarian of Congress James H. Billington made the selections after evaluating nearly 1,000 titles nominated by the public and consulting staff and advisers, the library said. "The films we choose are not necessarily the 'best' American films ever made or the most famous," Billington said in a statement. Rather, they are chosen because they have "cultural, historical or aesthetic significance." A film's selection recognizes its place in American film and cultural history, he said. "The registry stands among the finest summations of American cinema's wondrous first century." This year's selections span a wide cinematic range and include both obscure and well-known movies. Among the better-known films: _"Ben Hur," the 1959 epic starring Charlton Heston (news), which tells the story of a Jewish prince who is betrayed and sent into slavery by a Roman friend, only to regain his freedom and come back for revenge. Its centerpiece: an action-packed chariot race. _"Duck and Cover," the 1951 landmark civil defense film seen by millions of schoolchildren in the 1950s. In the case of an atomic attack, children were advised to duck beneath a table or desk and cover their heads. _"Jailhouse Rock," which showcased Elvis Presley in ultimate rebel mode. The edginess in this 1957 film was toned down in later Presley pictures. _"The Nutty Professor," the 1963 film which some rank as comic Jerry Lewis' greatest. _"Schindler's List," the 1993 film based on the true story of Oskar Schindler, a factory owner in Nazi-occupied Poland who employed thousands of Jewish workers and saved them from the Holocaust. Lesser known films on this year's list include "Daughters of the Dust," the first feature-length film by an black woman to receive a wide theatrical release, and "Empire," Andy Warhol's eight-hour, one-shot stationary camera look at the Empire State Building. The registry was established by Congress in the 1988 National Film Preservation Act, and each year, 25 movies are added. The Library of Congress works to ensure that each film in the registry is preserved for all time.

*update* Asia Struggles As Death Toll Hits 44,000 quote:By ANDI DJATMIKO, Associated Press Writer BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Mourners in Sri Lanka used their bare hands to dig graves Tuesday while hungry islanders in Indonesia turned to looting in the aftermath of Asia's devastating tsunamis. Thousands more bodies were found in Indonesia, dramatically increasing the death toll across 11 nations to around 44,000. Emergency workers found that 10,000 people had been killed in a single town, Meulaboh, in Aceh province at the northern tip of Sumatra island, the hardest hit region in Indonesia, said Purnomo Sidik, national disaster director at the Social Affairs Ministry. Another 9,000 were confirmed dead so far in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, and surrounding towns, he said. Along Aceh's hard-hit western coastline, villages were swamped up to the roofs, still unexplored by soldiers combing the area for survivors and dead. Refugees fleeing the area described surviving for days on little more than coconuts before reaching Banda Aceh. "The sea was full of bodies," said Sukardi Kasdi, who reached the capital from his town of Surang. With aid not arriving quick enough, desperate residents in Meulaboh and other towns in Aceh ÔÇö a region that was unique in that it was struck both by Sunday's massive quake and the killer waves that followed ÔÇö began to loot. "It is every person for themselves here," district official Tengku Zulkarnain told el-Shinta radio station from the area. In Sri Lanka, the toll also mounted significantly. Around 1,000 people were dead or missing from a train that was flung off its tracks when the gigantic waves hit. Rescuers pulled 204 bodies from the train's eight carriages ÔÇö reduced to twisted metal ÔÇö and cremated or buried them Tuesday next to the railroad track that runs along the coast. "Is this the fate that we had planned for? My darling, you were the only hope for me," cried one man for his dead girlfriend ÔÇö his university sweetheart ÔÇö as Buddhist monks held prayer nearby. More than 18,700 people died in Sri Lanka, more than 4,400 in India and more than 1,500 in Thailand, with numbers expected to rise. Scores were also killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives. The giant waves raced nearly 3,000 miles to east Africa, causing deaths in Somalia, Tanzania and Seychelles. And the toll was expected to continue to mount. A police official said 8,000 people were missing and possibly dead in India's remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands, located just north of Sumatra. So far, only 90 people were confirmed dead in the archipelago of 30 inhabited islands. The Indonesian vice president estimated that up to 25,000 could be dead on Aceh's western coastlines, bringing the country's potential toll up to 50,000. Europeans desperately sought relatives missing from holidays in Southeast Asia ÔÇö particularly Thailand, where bodies littered the once crowded beach resorts. Near the devastated Similan Beach and Spa Resort, where mostly German tourists were staying, a naked corpse hung suspended from a tree Tuesday as if crucified. A blond two-year-old Swedish boy, Hannes Bergstroem, found sitting alone on a road in Thailand was reunited with his uncle, who saw the boy's picture on a Web site. "This is a miracle, the biggest thing that could happen," said the uncle, who identified himself as Jim, after flying from his home country to Thailand to reach Hannes at the hospital were the boy was being treated. The boy's mother and grandmother were missing, while his father and grandfather were reportedly at another hospital. The vacationing former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was evacuated by Sri Lankan military helicopter from the hotel he was trapped by flooding in the south of the country. In Thailand, Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova, who appeared on the cover of 2003 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, was injured and her photographer boyfriend Simon Atlee was missing, Atlee's agent said. So far, more than 80 Westerners have been confirmed dead across the region ÔÇö including 11 Americans. But a British consulate official in Thailand warned that hundreds more foreign tourists were likely killed in the country's resorts. Sunday's massive quake of 9.0 magnitude off the Indonesian island of Sumatra sent 500-mph waves surging across the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal in the deadliest known tsunami since the one that devastated the Portuguese capital of Lisbon in 1755 and killed an estimated 60,000 people. Amid the devastation, however, were some miraculous stories of survival. In Malaysia, a 20-day-old baby was found alive on a floating mattress. She and her family were later reunited. A Hong Kong couple vacationing in Thailand clung to a mattress for six hours. In Sri Lanka, more than 300 people crammed into the Infant Jesus Church at Orrs Hill, located on high ground from their ravaged fishing villages. Families and childres slept on pews and the cement floor. "We had never seen the sea looking like that. It was like as if a calm sea had suddenly become a raging monster," said one woman, Haalima, recalling the giant wave that swept away her 5-year-old grandson, Adil. Adil was making sandcastles with his younger sister, Reeze, while Haalima sat in her home Sunday morning. Haalima said the girl ran to her complaining that waves had crushed their castles, then came screams and water entered the home. "When we looked, there was no shore anymore and no Adil," she said. Death was so widespread in Sri Lanka that the government waived rules requiring an autopsy before burial. In Muslim villages in the east of the otherwise Buddhist-dominated island, some survivors, lacking shovels, used giant iron forks used for communal cooking and their hands to scrape out graves for several dozen victims, half of them children. "The toll is going up and I will not be surprised it reaches 20,000 to 25,000," said Nimal Hettiarchchi, director of Sri Lanka's National Disaster Management Center. Relief workers warned that survivors could face outbreaks of disease, including malaria and cholera. "Our biggest fear at the moment is the shortage of drinking water," said Janaka Gunewardene, a director at Sri Lanka's disaster management center, adding that waterways and well across Sri Lanka's northern, eastern and southern coasts were contaminated, said. A new danger emerged Tuesday: the floods uprooted land mines in Sri Lanka ÔÇö a nation torn by a decades-old war with Tamil separatists in the north. The mines now threatened aid workers and survivors, UNICEF said. The first international deliveries of food were being delivered to ravaged areas, as humanitarian agencies ÔÇö accustomed to disasters in one or two countries at time ÔÇö tried to organize to help on an unprecedented geographic scale, across 11 nations. The disaster could be history's costliest, with "many billions of dollars" of damage, said U.N. Undersecretary Jan Egeland, who is in charge of emergency relief coordination. A dozen trucks loaded with more than 160 tons of rice, lentils and sugar sent by the U.N. World Food Progam, left Tuesday from Colombo for Sri Lanka's southern and eastern coasts, and a second shipment was planned for overnight. UNICEF officials said about 175 tons of rice arrived in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and six tons of medical supplies were to arrive by Thursday. Helicopters in India rushed medicine to stricken areas. In Sri Lanka, the Health Ministry dispatched 300 physicians to the disaster zone by helicopter.

LOL, well he does shoot his left hand.

Interesting! One question though, did he hit anything