Saturday, August 20, 2005
NOT LIKE VIETNAM AT ALL, NOSIREE
Army Planning for 4 More Years in Iraq
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Army is planning for the possibility of keeping the current number of soldiers in
Iraq — well over 100,000 — for four more years, the Army's top general said Saturday.
Formerly classified info, Schoomaker discloses actual size of GWB's penis
In an Associated Press interview, Gen. Peter Schoomaker said the Army is prepared for the "worst case" in terms of the required level of troops in Iraq. He said the number could be adjusted lower if called for by slowing the force rotation or by shortening tours for soldiers.
Schoomaker said commanders in Iraq and others who are in the chain of command will decide how many troops will be needed next year and beyond. His responsibility is to provide them, trained and equipped.
About 138,000 U.S. troops, including about 25,000 Marines, are now in Iraq.
"We are now into '07-'09 in our planning," Schoomaker said, having completed work on the set of combat and support units that will be rotated into Iraq over the coming year for 12-month tours of duty.
Schoomaker's comments come amid indications from Bush administration officials and commanders in Iraq that the size of the U.S. force may be scaled back next year if certain conditions are achieved.
Among those conditions: an Iraqi constitution must be drafted in coming days; it must be approved in a national referendum; and elections must be held for a new government under that charter.
Schoomaker, who spoke aboard an Army jet on the trip back to Washington from Kansas City, Mo., made no predictions about the pace of political progress in Iraq. But he said he was confident the Army could provide the current number of forces to fight the insurgency for many more years. The 2007-09 rotation he is planning would go beyond
President Bush's term in office, which ends in January 2009.
Schoomaker was in Kansas City for a dinner Friday hosted by the Military Order of the World Wars, a veterans' organization.
"We're staying 18 months to two years ahead of ourselves" in planning which active-duty and National Guard and Reserve units will be provided to meet the commanders' needs, Schoomaker said in the interview.
The main active-duty combat units that are scheduled to go to Iraq in the coming year are the 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 4th Infantry Division from Fort Hood, Texas. Both did one-year tours earlier in the war.
The Army has changed the way it arranges troop rotations.
Instead of sending a full complement of replacement forces each 12-month cycle, it is stretching out the rotation over two years.
The current rotation, for 2005-07, will overlap with the 2006-08 replacements. Beyond that, the Army is piecing together the plan for the 2007-09 switch, Schoomaker said.
With the recent deployments of National Guard brigades from Georgia and Pennsylvania, the National Guard has seven combat brigades in Iraq — the most of the entire war — plus thousands of support troops.
Along with the Army Reserve and Marine Reserve, they account for about 40 percent of the total U.S. forces in Iraq. Schoomaker said that will be scaled back next year to about 25 percent as newly expanded active-duty divisions such as the 101st Airborne enter the rotation.
August has been the deadliest month of the war for the National Guard and Reserve, with at least 42 fatalities thus far. Schoomaker disputed the suggestion by some that the Guard and Reserve units are not fully prepared for the hostile environment of Iraq.
"I'm very confident that there is no difference in the preparation" of active-duty soldiers and the reservists, who normally train one weekend a month and two weeks each summer, unless they are mobilized. Once called to active duty, they go through the same training as active-duty units.
In internal surveys, some in the reserve forces have indicated to Army leaders that they think they are spending too much time in pre-deployment training, not too little, Schoomaker said.
"Consistently, what we've been (hearing) is, `We're better than you think we are, and we could do this faster,'" he said. "I can promise you that we're not taking any risk in terms of what we're doing to prepare people."
___
On the Net:
Schoomaker's official biography at http://www.army.mil/leaders/csa/bio.htmSaturday, August 20, 2005
WARP NINE, MR. CRUSHER! AND SEND STARFLEET A SUBSPACE MEMO...
Scientists Mess with the Speed of Light
LiveScience - Researchers in Switzerland have succeeded in breaking the cosmic speed limit by getting light to go faster than, well, light.
Or is it all an illusion?
Scientists have recently succeeded in doing all sorts of fancy things with light, including slowing it down and even stopping it all together. Now a team at the Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland is controlling the speed of light using simple off-the-shelf optical fibers, without the aid of special media such as cold gases or crystalline solids like in other experiments.
"This has the enormous advantage of being a simple, inexpensive procedure that works at any wavelength," said Luc Thvenaz, lead author of the study detailing the research.
Using a technique called Stimulated Brillouin Scattering, the researchers were able to slow down or ratchet up the speed of light like the gas pedal on a car. They succeeded in reducing the speed of light by almost a factor of 4 (although that's still plenty fast at 46,500 miles per second), but even more dramatically, the team was also able to speed up the speed of light.
Light in a vacuum travels at approximately 186,000 miles per second, but a popular misconception is that, according to Einstein's special theory of relativity, nothing in the universe can travel faster than this speed.
This seeming paradox can be resolved because a pulse of light is actually made up of many separate frequency components, each of which moves at their own velocities. This is known as the pulse's phase velocity. If all the frequency components have the same phase velocity, then the overall pulse will also appear to move at that velocity.
However, if the components have different phase velocities, then the pulse's overall velocity will depend on the relationships between the velocities of the separate components. If the velocities differ, the pulse is said to be moving at the group velocity.
By tweaking the relationship between phase velocities, it's possible to adjust the group velocity and create the illusion that parts of the pulse are traveling faster than the speed of light.
One area where such an advance could be enormously beneficial is in the telecommunications industry.
Although information can be channeled through fiber optics at the speed of light, it can't be processed at this speed because with current technologies, light signals must be transformed into much slower electrical signals before they are useful.
Thevenaz's technique would essentially allow light to be processed with light without a costly electrical conversion.
The group's research will be published in an August 22nd issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters.Saturday, August 20, 2005
WELL NO SHIT SHERLOCK, WHAT GAVE YOU THE FIRST @#$%^! CLUE, THE GUNS OR THE HOS?
Video games linked to aggression in boys
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most studies done on violence and video games support the conclusion that violent video games can increase aggressive behavior in children and adolescents, especially boys, researchers said on Friday.
An analysis of 20 years of research shows the effects can be both immediate and long-lasting.
"The majority of the studies would suggest there are effects," said Jessica Nicoll of Saint Leo University in Saint Leo, Florida, who worked on the study.
One study showed that children who played a violent game for less than 10 minutes and then took a mood assessment test rated themselves with aggressive traits and aggressive actions shortly after playing.
Teachers of 600 8th and 9th graders, aged 13 to 15, said children who spent more time playing violent video games were more hostile than other children and more likely to argue with authority figures and other students.
The findings, presented at an annual meeting of American Psychological Association, prompted the group to adopt a resolution recommending that all violence be reduced in video games and interactive media marketed to children and youth.
"Additionally, the APA also encourages parents, educators and health care providers to help youth make more informed choices about which games to play," the Association said in a statement.
BAD EXAMPLE
Video games set a bad example and may be particularly influential because a player takes on the roles of heroes and villains, violent and otherwise, the APA said.
Perpetrators of violence go unpunished 73 percent of the time in all violent scenes, the group said. "Showing violent acts without consequences teach youth that violence is an effective means of resolving conflict," said psychologist Elizabeth Carll, who helps direct the group's Committee on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media.
Nicoll said in an interview that "only a handful" of the studies she and colleagues examined found no connection between violence and violent video games.
The findings are similar to those seen for violent television shows. Joaquim Ferreira of the University of Coimbra in Portugal and colleagues studied more than 800 youngsters aged from 9 to 14 and found the biggest factor linking television violence and actual aggression was the child's understanding of the violence.
"It is the way you perceive the violence and how you deal with the kids and help them understand reality," Ferreira, who also presented his findings to the APA meeting, said in an interview.
Parents can sit with children and explain cartoons or television shows to them -- something the APA and other groups recommend doing. But this is more difficult to do with video games, Ferreira said.
"You are part of the thing," he said. "You get involved in the violence because you are doing it."Friday, August 19, 2005
JESUS(tm)
Churches seeking marketing-savvy breed of pastor
Christian Science Monitor - A year ago, the Rev. Scott Schlotfelt was weighing job offers from three churches smitten by what he had to offer.
But they weren't talking about his preaching or counseling skills. What they were seeking, like a number of churches across the United States, was some savvy marketing. And like a growing number of pastors, consultants, and volunteers, Mr. Schlotfelt was eager to do some branding for the Lord.
"I've kind of had a heart for marketing, [and] I think a lot of churches are looking for outreach" specialists, says Schlotfelt, outreach pastor at Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, Md. He received his undergraduate degree in marketing, then studied for the ministry and helped congregations build up their images through advertising in Las Vegas and Amarillo, Texas.
"It's the medium of marketing that's used to get a message across [in today's culture], whether it's an election or you're trying to sell a product," he adds. "But in this case, we're just trying to hear the hope of a new life that is eternal."
To succeed, a number of denominations and local congregations alike are seeking marketing know-how, whether among church staff or from from hired experts.
Churches' outreach to potential members as summer winds down. The United Methodist Church, for instance, will make its largest media buy of the year starting Aug. 30 - a four-week, $4 million effort. To get that marketing know-how, they're turning to those who know how to sell cars, houses, and other commercial products.
"The church in more ways than not is mirroring Wall Street and the world and Madison Avenue," says H. B. London, vice president of pastoral ministries at Focus on the Family, a national resource network for evangelical Christians. "We're [lagging] behind them to a certain degree, but we're using all their techniques."
In the past decade, several firms have honed a niche by providing churches with marketing professionals for hire. Aspire!One, a marketing firm in Sycamore, Ill., has branched out to serve church clients - who might need one mailer or an entire brand identity - alongside its corporate ones. At Church Marketing Solutions, Inc. in Centreville, Va., which offers low-cost marketing, 4 out of 5 staffers have masters in business degrees. At the headquarters of Outreach Inc. in Vista, Calif., 120 employees have brought corporate-style marketing to thousands of congregations.
Seeking a snazzy web site
Meanwhile, some churches with sufficient resources are doing as Mountain did and dedicating in-house staff to marketing. Six-month-old Kinetic Christian Church in Charlotte, N.C. noticed what the Rev. Scott Johnson was doing with lively images on the website of an Indianapolis congregation. On that basis, recruiters hired him away to Charlotte.
"They saw what I'd been doing and said, 'What you've been doing there, we want you to do it here,' " Mr. Johnson says. Now an associate pastor, he uses his graphic-design background to create images for outreach marketing campaigns.
The same visuals - for example, a plug in a socket as a metaphor for prayer - light up the big screen when the congregation gathers for worship in a former movie theater. On the side, he teaches church professionals from as far away as Florida and California to use graphic-design software in their own marketing efforts.
More business background
For many in church leadership, corporate-style marketing is nothing new. Among males enrolled in seminary in 2000, the most common educational background was technical science, including business, communications, and computer science, according to a study by the Center for the Study of Theological Education at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York. (For women, it's social science.)
Another factor: almost 2 in 3 seminarians are over 30 years of age, according to 2003 data from the Association of Theological Schools, which means church leaders often have had business experience.
Thinking in terms of customers and markets, however, might not always bring out the best in a church leader, according to Jackson Carroll, a professor emeritus of religion and society and former director of research at the Pulpit & Pew Project at Duke University in Durham, N.C. He cites the example of Southern preachers who took up the cause of civil rights in the 1960s despite vehement local resistance.
"It didn't help marketing at all," Professor Carroll says. "People left churches in droves when pastors or leaders in the congregation took a strong stand in favor of integration, [but] they did it anyway."
Today, he says, pastors who make marketing a top priority run the risk of fostering "a congregation that refuses to deal with issues of individual or social justice because it might offend someone."
"Go therefore ..."
Others, however, see marketing as a necessary part of Christ Jesus' great commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matt. 28:19, New Revised Standard Version).
"Marketing and the church, they go hand in hand [because] we're called to bring our message to a community," says Kristal Dove, operations manager at Church Marketing Solutions. But she says not all church leaders should be involved.
"We basically make it so ministers can focus on people and not have to worry about this stuff," Ms. Dove says.
But in the opinion of Mr. London of Focus on the Family, any church leader's success depends at least in part on bringing the best of corporate-marketing tactics to bear on a righteous cause.
"Nearly every pastor is a salesman or a marketer of one kind or another because ... we have a philosophy to sell," he says. "The best marketers and best salesmen will have more converts, will have more people, will take in more money.... Evangelicals are marketers because they're really passionate about their product."Wednesday, August 17, 2005
'NOT AFFILIATED WITH MR. INTERNET BUBBLE'
High-priced housing faces risks
USAToday - Fifty-three metropolitan areas representing 31% of the total U.S. housing market are considered extremely overvalued and confront a high risk of future price corrections, a study conducted by National City Corp. says. The study determines a market extremely overvalued if prices are 30% above where the study estimates they should be based on historic price data, area income, mortgage rates and population density.
Metro areas that are extremely overvalued and vulnerable to price correction:
Rank Metro area Q1 valuation
------- ---------------- -----------------
1 Santa Barbara, Calif. 69%
2 Salinas, Calif. 67%
3 Naples, Fla. 62%
4 Riverside, Calif. 60%
5 Merced, Calif. 59%
6 Stockton, Calif. 58%
7 Port St. Lucie, Fla. 58%
8 Madera, Calif. 57%
9 Napa, Calif. 57%
10 Medford, Ore. 55%
11 Sacramento, Calif 54%
12 Modesto, Calif. 53%
13 San Diego, Calif. 53%
14 Santa Rosa, Calif. 52%
15 Chico, Calif. 52%
16 Barnstable Town, Mass. 50%
17 San Luis Obispo, Calif. 49%
18 Oxnard, Calif. 48%
19 Fresno, Calif. 48%
20 Los Angeles, Calif. 48%
21 Miami, Fla. 46%
22 West Palm Beach, Fla. 46%
23 Vallejo, Calif. 45%
24 Ocean City, N.J. 45%
25 Bend, Ore. 45%
26 Sarasota, Fla. 45%
27 Redding, Calif. 44%
28 Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 43%
29 Nassau-Suffolk, N.Y. 42%
30 Santa Ana, Calif. 41%
31 Atlantic City, N.J. 41%
32 Bakersfield, Calif. 40%
33 Oakland, Calif. 39%
34 Santa Cruz, Calif. 39%
35 Palm Bay, Fla. 38%
36 Las Vegas, Nev. 38%
37 Poughkeepsie, N.Y. 37%
38 Vero Beach, Fla. 37%
39 San Jose, Calif. 36%
40 Bellingham, Wash. 35%
41 Panama City, Fla. 35%
42 Coral, Fla. 35%
43 Providence, R.I. 34%
44 Reno, Nev. 33%
45 Kingston, N.Y. 32%
46 Visalia, Calif. 32%
47 Deltona, Fla. 31%
48 Boston, Mass. 31%
49 Washington D.C. 31%
50 Essex County, Mass. 30%
51 San Francisco, Calif. 30%
52 Prescott, Ariz. 30%
53 Duluth, Minn. 30%Wednesday, August 17, 2005
TOLDYA THE WEATHER'S BEEN FREAKY THIS SUMMER...
Pacific Coast Ecosystems Return to Normal
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)- The northerly winds that sustain the Pacific Coast's marine ecosystems have returned, but their arrival came too late for fish and birds that couldn't survive the unseasonably warm waters.
Coastal ecosystems rely on winds blowing south to push warmer surface waters away from shore and bring up colder water from the ocean bottom. That upwelling of nutrient-rich water feeds massive blooms of plankton — the tiny plant-like organisms that form the basis of the marine food web.
The winds usually start blowing in March or April, but when they didn't arrive this spring, researchers saw the effects up and down the coast — higher ocean temperatures near the shore, very little plankton, a drop in groundfish catches and a spike in dead seabirds on beaches.
The winds finally returned in mid-July and generated the long-delayed upwelling and a dramatic increase in plankton populations, according to researchers who recently returned from ocean-monitoring trips.
"We're not sure why the winds didn't come (in the spring), but the situation has remarkably changed, and the ecosystems seem to be getting back to normal," said William Cochlan, a marine ecologist at San Francisco State University, who spent most of July monitoring algae off the coast of Washington and British Columbia.
Earlier this summer, bird researchers along the coast reported a sharp increase in deaths of seabirds such as common murres, Brandt's cormorants and Cassin's auklets. Marine biologists reported unusually low counts of juvenile salmon and rockfish.
William Peterson, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Newport, Ore., said ocean conditions have normalized off the coasts of California and Oregon, but it's too late for many species.
Peterson and other scientists hope the coastal waters stay cold through the fall and carry over until next spring. They warn that the biological effects of this year's oceanic disruption could be felt for months, or years.
Some researchers suspect that global warming — the rise in temperatures blamed on emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide — may have played a role in delaying the winds, but a connection is difficult to prove because atmospheric systems are so complex. Peterson wants to bring together scientists from different fields to discuss what happened.
"There's no doubt that the planet's warming, but who knows how it's going to affect the coastal systems," Peterson said. "It certainly was an odd year. If we could figure out what might have caused it, then maybe we could predict it in the future."Wednesday, August 17, 2005
REMIND ME - HOW MANY TAX BILLIONS DID GEEDUMBYA JUST SIGN OVER AS SUBSIDIES FOR OIL COMPANIES?
Wholesale Inflation Jumps on Gas Prices
WASHINGTON (AP)- Inflation at the wholesale level increased by the largest amount in nine months in July, reflecting the hit consumers are taking at gas pumps.
The Labor Department reported that its
Producer Price Index, which measures price pressures before they reach the consumer, jumped by 1 percent in July, the biggest advance since a 1.5 percent increase last October.
The report on wholesale prices depicted many of the same price pressures shown in the 0.5 percent increase in consumer prices reported on Tuesday. However, the wholesale report showed that the core rate of inflation, excluding energy and food, rose by a worrisome 0.4 percent in July, the biggest increase since January.
Core inflation at the retail level rose by a much more modest 0.1 percent in July. The biggest difference in the two reports was in the measurement of new car prices. Car prices fell by 1 percent in the report on inflation at the consumer level while car prices were up 1.5 percent in the wholesale price report.
Analysts explained the difference by saying that the wholesale report, which measures inflation at an earlier stage in the supply chain, caught the introduction of attractive incentive offers in June while the consumer price report did not pick up those sales incentives until the July report.
The wholesale price report showed that energy prices rose by 4.4 percent in July following a 2 percent increase in June.
Gasoline prices were up 10.9 percent, the biggest surge since a 12.8 percent rise last October. Analysts caution that motorists should be braced for another large increase in gasoline costs in August, reflecting the fact that gasoline prices have continued to rise in recent weeks as oil prices have surged above $66 per barrel.
The government reported Monday that the average nationwide price for gasoline rose to $2.55 per gallon in its latest survey, up 18 cents per gallon in just one week.
Analysts, however, believe that this year's oil shock will not push the country into a recession like the oil shocks of the 1970s and 1980s did because of different circumstances this time around. They contend that this year's oil shock is coming at a time of low inflation pressures outside of energy, which means that the
Federal Reserve will not feel the need to aggressively raise interest rates to fight widespread inflation.
The PPI report showed that food costs at the wholesale level fell for a fourth consecutive month, dropping by 0.3 percent in July as the costs of fresh vegetables, fruits and beef all declined.
Over the past 12 months, wholesale prices have risen by 4.6 percent while the core inflation rate, excluding food and energy, has risen by a more modest 2.8 percent.
Computers were one area where prices continued to decline, falling 2.1 percent in July.Wednesday, August 17, 2005
HEAR NO EVIL, SEE NO EVIL
'Able Danger' Stopped From Informing FBI
WASHINGTON (AP) - An Army intelligence officer said Wednesday he does not believe the 9/11 commission pressed hard enough for documentation of claims that military intelligence found a U.S.-based terrorist cell that included Mohamed Atta, who turned out to be the leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, prior to the terrorist strikes.
"I don't believe they ever got all the documents, but then again I don't think that they pressed properly to get all of the documents," Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said on CBS' "The Early Show."
He says he was associated with a small intelligence unit, called "Able Danger," that had identified Atta and three of the other future Sept. 11 hijackers as al-Qaida members by mid-2000.
He said military lawyers stopped the unit from sharing the information with the
FBI out of concerns about gathering and sharing information on people in the United States legally.
"What we were trying to do as good soldiers is we saw a threat, we recognized the fact that they were here in the United States and we felt we should do something even when the lawyers said we couldn't," Shaffer said.
"The problem was at the time the Special Operations Command is very secretive, quiet warriors," he said. "They like doing things quietly. I had to respect their wishes, to respect the sanctity of that information. What I tried to do was bring them together with the FBI so they could discuss this and take the appropriate action."
The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks left the Able Danger claims out of its official report and has since said it did not obtain enough information on the operation to consider it historically significant.
In an interview with Fox News Channel and The New York Times distributed Tuesday evening, Shaffer said the panel was not given all the information his team had gathered.
"I'm told confidently by the person who did move the material over that the 9/11 commission received two briefcase-size containers of documents," Shaffer said in the Fox News report. "I can tell you for a fact that would not be ... one-20th of the information that Able Danger consisted of during the time we spent."
Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., vice chairman of the House Armed Services and
Homeland Security committees, has said the Sept. 11 commission did not adequately investigate the claim that four of the hijackers had been identified more than a year before the attacks.
Former commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said last week that the military official who made the claim had no documentation to back it up.
Shaffer rejected that remark. "Leaving a project targeting al-Qaida as a global threat a year before we were attacked by al-Qaida is equivalent to having an investigation of Pearl Harbor and leaving somehow out the Japanese," he said in the Fox interview.
In the Times account of the interview, Shaffer said he was "at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued" in describing his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the FBI in 2000 and early 2001.Tuesday, August 16, 2005
THE GOOD NEWS IS, YOU'RE DYING FROM A 'STATISTICAL FLUKE'.
Idaho probes sudden deaths from rare brain disease
TWIN FALLS, Idaho (Reuters) - In late May Marjorie Skinner played golf well enough to place fourth in a Memorial Day weekend golf tournament. Yet within weeks, the previously vibrant retiree suddenly started losing her ability to speak.
By the time her family buried her on Friday, she was the fifth suspected victim in the same sparsely populated area of Idaho of
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a rare brain-wasting disease that typically afflicts only one in a million people.
As word of this latest death spread on Monday, local and federal health experts sifted through clues about an illness different from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human form of mad cow disease.
"Five (cases) in one valley is pretty serious," Sue Skinner, Marjorie's daughter in law, said in an interview. "It's a grave concern in our family."
The mystery has deepened in recent weeks. Only at the end of May did local health officials see a second elderly woman die of the incurable disease involving a malformed protein, or prion, that kills brain cells. After that, they learned of three other suspected cases, including a CJD death in February that was reported only last month.
"Is what is happening in Idaho an anomaly, a statistical fluke? That is possible," said Ermias Belay, a top CJD expert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta who is helping advise officials in Idaho. "But once it exceeds 1.5 or 2 per million, you start asking questions."
"If they are all confirmed, it could be odd."
In a year, the United States typically sees fewer than 300 CJD cases, which mete out rapid death to the elderly, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
ANY UNUSUAL HOBBIES?
In Twin Falls, Cheryle Becker, epidemiology manager for Idaho's South Central District Health, is going to families with detailed questionnaires aimed at finding the roots of a disease that could date back 30 years.
She asks about past travels, unusual hobbies and dietary habits, including of organ meats, brain and venison.
"We're asking them if they've consumed elk," Becker said, adding that many hunt venison in this region of the country. "We're not having many people say that they have."
Experts say they do not expect to find a link to eating meat, although locals are asking if there is any connection to the human variant of mad cow disease. "It's very frightening to the community." said Cheryl Juntunen, director of the South Central District Health.
Two confirmed U.S. cases of mad cow disease, one in a Washington state dairy animal in 2003 and the other in a Texas beef cow this year have further heightened concern.
To date, health experts have found few parallels between the women, all of European heritage. Four were Idaho natives, all had children, none had experienced neurological disease.
One had spent time in Britain prior to the outbreak of mad cow disease there, officials said. Several husbands were involved in farming, as is commonplace in a rural farmland region where locals still talk about stuntman Evel Knievel's 1974 attempted jump over the Snake River.
"There are things that lead you to believe this is not variant CJD," Becker said, pointing to the advanced age of the victims and faster death than in mad cow-related cases.
The Centers for Disease Control estimate that spontaneous flaws in cell proteins result in 85 percent of CJD cases. Another 5-15 percent comes from genetic inheritance, leaving just a small percentage of other unexplained cases.
Yet experts say studies of a few past clusters of CJD cases are inconclusive; some say better records and ability to recognize the illness could account for the Idaho mystery.
"I think in the end this may be a statistical fluke," said Christine Hahn, chief epidemiologist for the state of Idaho. "But there is so little known and there have been very few published reports on these clusters."
Families for three out of the five Idaho victims have agreed to autopsies, officials say, and results from those tests may provide essential clues in the coming weeks.Tuesday, August 16, 2005
RICH GET RICHER, POOR GET POORER, AND FEUDALISM IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER FOR THE USA.
High gas prices widen divide between rich and poor
USAToday - Though the price of gasoline has risen by more than 60 cents a gallon in the past year, economists have been quick to note that the impact has been limited. That's because the role of energy in today's high-tech, high-finance, health care economy is much smaller than it was in the 1970s, when surging energy costs wreaked economic havoc.
But though the current price spike is unlikely to generate stagflation or bring back WIN (Whip Inflation Now) buttons, it is being keenly felt by low-income workers, who spend a larger portion of their income on necessities such as food and fuel. For someone who drives 15,000 miles a year and gets 20 miles per gallon, a 60-cent jump means an extra $450 a year at the gas pump.
Though that might not seem like such a big deal to those in the more comfortable classes, it's far from trivial for workers already struggling with soaring costs for housing and health care.
Consider the cruel calculus of rising fuel prices faced by low- and moderate-income workers in high-priced communities. Many have been forced in recent years to commute longer distances because of rising housing costs. Now, they have to pay more to commute.
Adding to the misery is a undeniable fact: Oil prices are rising because of economic growth both at home and abroad that many workers are not benefiting from. The recovery in the United States has done wonders for corporate profits and upper-income pay, but it has hardly budged hourly wages. Explosive growth in countries such as China and India means that workers here not only have to compete against workers in these countries for jobs but also for natural resources such as oil.
Rising fuel prices will have some impact on overall spending patterns. Money that goes into tanking up is money not spent at Best Buy, Wal-Mart or Starbucks. Energy-consuming industries such as airlines and trucking will suffer.
But the biggest impact of rising costs might be social rather than economic. They will accentuate the growing divisions between those eking out a living and those who find themselves well-off.
The good news from today's oil price spike is that overall pain might be limited. The bad news is that it will be felt principally by those least equipped to handle it.