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Going To Hell In A Very Stylish Handbasket.

"El diablo sabes mas por viejo que por diablo" - old Mexican proverb

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Achtung! Das machine ist nicht fur gerfingerpoken und mittengraben. Ist easy schnappen der pringenwerk, blowenfusen, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dumkopfen, das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in der pockets, relaxen und watchen der blinkenlights.

links:
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The Nation
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Bush or Chimp?
Landover Baptist Church
The White House
The Onion
Ernie's House of Whoop Ass
Project for the New American Century
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Project for the New American Empire
All Hat, No Cattle
Unfairly Balanced
Buck Fush

HELL EXPLAINED BY CHEMISTRY STUDENT

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid term.

The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well :

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Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

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Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.

The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."

Mortgage crisis hits million-dollar homes

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sheriff Leo McGuire presides over foreclosure auctions in Bergen County, New Jersey, where the bidding for a home reached $1.2 million last June -- a record for one of the wealthiest counties in the nation.

Homes sold on the auction block for as much as $852,000 this month -- more than quadruple the median home price in the United States. County officials believe they are close to setting another record soon.

In Troy, Michigan, Dorothy Guzek, a credit counselor since 1988, has also seen the changing face of foreclosure.

Her clients, while predominantly poor and minorities, increasingly are neither. Nowadays, homeowners holding professional careers with six-figure salaries regularly drop by her office. More and more they come from upscale Michigan communities such as Independence and Clarkston -- once the summer retreat for Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Co.

"Because of the financing that was possible, so many people bought the bigger house, the million-dollar house with the bowling alley or the tennis court outside," says Guzek, who works for GreenPath Debt Solutions, a nonprofit service based in Farmington Hills, Michigan. "People across all income brackets are having financial hardship."

For those on the frontlines of the growing U.S. mortgage crisis, these are the early signs that the explosion of subprime loans made to mostly poorer borrowers is reaching higher ground. The damage is hitting homes financed through jumbo loans for more than $400,000 and so-called Alt-A loans that are a notch above subprime and a step below prime.

Americans already are facing foreclosure at a record pace, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Lenders started foreclosure actions against more than one in every 200 U.S. mortgage borrowers in the last quarter of 2006.

About 2.2 million foreclosures due to bad mortgage loans may cost U.S. homeowners $164 billion, mostly from lost home equity, according to the Center for Responsible Lending, a Durham, North Carolina-based research group.

In the last three months, the percentage of foreclosures for U.S. homes valued at more than $750,000 has climbed to 2.5 percent, the highest since early 2005, when RealtyTrac, a online marketplace for foreclosed properties, began tracking data. The overall rate of foreclosures also is on pace to increase by a third this year.

"Everyone's looking at subprime. The rock they aren't looking under are the adjustable rate mortgages and teaser rates and low money-down loans," said Mark Kiesel, a portfolio manager for Pacific Investment Management Co., the world's biggest bond manager. "It's going to affect prime as well."

Kiesel said he sold his Newport Beach, California, home for more than $1 million in May last year after the property appreciated more than 20 percent in two years. He believes delinquencies and defaults will rise, weighing down most of the housing market.

California, with 3,384 foreclosures of higher-scale homes since December, is leading the nation, followed by Florida and New York, according to RealtyTrac. The MBA doesn't track foreclosure data by home value.

ICEBERG

Josh Rosner, managing director at investment research firm Graham Fisher & Co., says the growing numbers of foreclosures outside the subprime market is just the start.

"To define the problem as a subprime problem is short-sighted," Rosner said. "It's really seeing the tip of the iceberg as the iceberg."

Compounding the risk is the nature of homebuyers of higher-end homes, says Rosner. About 40 percent of homes bought last year were second homes or investment properties. Speculative buyers may be more at risk, he said.

Standard & Poor's said on a conference call on Thursday that foreclosure rates are likely to surpass levels last seen during the 2001 recession.

"That giant ATM you've been living in has just shut down," said David Wyss, chief economist at S&P in New York. "Consumers are in debt and we've been living beyond our means for some time."

CDOs

The latest foreclosure data also may spell trouble for Wall Street, where pools of bonds may be susceptible to nonperforming loans that underpin debt vehicles known as collateralized debt obligations.

CDOs group debt based on credit quality and are similar to mutual funds in packaging securities to help diversify risk. In CDOs, the strongest debt is at the top of the capital structure, helping to smooth out any drag on performance from weaker debt, such as subprime loans.

Just as more expensive homes are beginning to fall through the cracks, the fear is higher-rated bonds within CDO structures may be vulnerable.

The declining performance of subprime loans have resulted in CDOs losing about $20 billion in market value, according to investment bank Lehman Brothers.

UBS Securities said in a report last month that rising delinquencies may cause losses within some subprime mortgage bonds rated as high as the "A" category.

FRAUD-FUELED

At the Justice Center in Hackensack, New Jersey, on Friday, the wood-paneled room is filled with about 40 people and the auction is routine. The first property on the sales sheet lists a Korean homeowner with $509,000 of outstanding debt. There are no bidders. Deutsche Bank, holder of the busted loan, buys the property with a quick $100 bid.

Sheriff McGuire calls the process "one of the most distasteful parts of my position." He places most of the blame on bankers who allowed questionable lending practices.

"This might not have happened if not for these new type of loans," McGuire said, minutes before the auction. The loans also have helped millions of Americans purchase new homes, he concedes.

"The banks took a chance on the future, and the homeowners took a chance so there's enough blame to go around," McGuire said. Still, "the banks and lenders have largely set them up for this downfall."

Adding to the grief, mortgage scams and con artists trying to take advantage of distressed homeowners abound, boosting foreclosure rates, county workers said.

"It's not the American Dream anymore," said Fran Napolitano, a county clerk in Hackensack. "It's 'who can I stab next."'

In Detroit's suburbs, hit hard by the U.S. auto industry downturn and financial troubles at General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., the story strikes home each day for GreenPath's Guzek.

"It's sad. It's just an awful feeling," she said. "You hope that you can come up with a financial plan to help people remain in their homes, but sometimes it's not the best thing for them."

These days, her calendar of eight counseling sessions a day, 40 a week, remains full. Increasingly, she offers different advice than devising financial plans to save her clients' homes.

Circumcision recommended to fight HIV

GENEVA, Associated Press - U.N. health agencies recommended Wednesday that heterosexual men undergo circumcision because of "compelling" evidence that it can reduce their chances of contracting HIV by up to 60 percent.

But World Health Organization and UNAIDS experts said men need to be aware that circumcision is only partial protection against the virus and must be used with other measures.

"We must be clear," said Catherine Hankins of UNAIDS. "Male circumcision does not provide complete protection against HIV."

Studies suggest 5.7 million new cases of HIV infection and 3 million deaths over 20 years could be prevented by male circumcision in sub-Saharan Africa, the agencies said.

Still, men and women who consider male circumcision as an HIV preventive method need to continue using other forms of protection such as male and female condoms, abstinence, delaying the start of sexual activity and reducing the number of sexual partners, she said.

Otherwise, they could develop a false sense of security and engage in high-risk behaviors that could undermine the partial protection provided by male circumcision, the agencies said.

Men also should be warned that they are at a higher risk of being infected with HIV if they resume sex before their wound has healed. Likewise an HIV-positive man can more easily pass on the disease to his partner if the wound is still unhealed.

The recommendations were based on a meeting earlier this month in Montreux, Switzerland, where experts discussed three trials — in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa — that produced "strong evidence" of the risk reduction resulting from heterosexual male circumcision.

"Based on the evidence presented, which was considered to be compelling, experts attending the consultation recommended that male circumcision now be recognized as an additional important intervention to reduce the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men," a joint statement said.

The agencies said much depends on the situation in a given country, and little general benefit will result in countries where the HIV epidemic is concentrated among sex workers, injecting drug users or men who have sex with men.

The public health impact is likely to be most rapid where there is a high rate of HIV infection among men having sex with women.

"It was therefore recommended that countries with high prevalence, generalized heterosexual HIV epidemics that currently have low rates of male circumcision consider urgently scaling up access to male circumcision services," the agencies said.

More study is needed to determine whether male circumcision will cut the transmission of HIV to women. More study also is required to find out whether male circumcision will reduce HIV infection in homosexual intercourse, it said, but it said promoting circumcision of HIV-positive men was not recommended.

"The recommendations represent a significant step forward in HIV prevention," said Dr. Kevin De Cock, director of WHO's HIV/AIDS department. "Countries with high rates of heterosexual HIV infection and low rates of male circumcision now have an additional intervention which can reduce the risk of HIV infection in heterosexual men."

Increasing male circumcision in areas where it the procedure is rare will result in immediate benefit to the men circumcised, but it will take years before there will be an impact on the epidemic.

Although the rate of circumcision varies considerably from country to country, globally an estimated 665 million men, or 30 percent of men in the world, are circumcised, the statement said.

The agencies said the risks involved in male circumcision are generally low, but can be serious if the operation is performed in unhygienic settings by poorly trained, ill-equipped health workers.

Priority should be given to providing circumcision to age groups at highest risk of acquiring HIV because it will have the most immediate impact on the disease. But, it said, circumcising younger males also will have a public health impact over the longer term.

It gave no estimate how much providing the service would cost, but said more money would be needed, but that donors should regard it as "an important, evidence-based intervention."

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On the Net:

WHO HIV/AIDS program: http://www.who.int/hiv

STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN

By Gale Berkowitz, University of California, Los Angeles

A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriages, and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more.

Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research - most of it on men - upside down.

"Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experienced stress, the condition triggered a hormonal cascade that prepared the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible," explains Laura Cousino Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study's authors. "It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers."

Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just "fight or flight." "In fact," says Dr. Klein, "it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the 'fight or flight' response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect. This calming response does not occur in men", says Dr. Klein, "because testosterone - which men produce in high levels when they're under stress - seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen", she adds, "seems to enhance it."

The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic "aha!" moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. "There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded," says Dr. Klein. "When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something."

The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health.

It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. "There's no doubt," says Dr. Klein, "that friends are helping us live." In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%.

Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life.

In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidantes was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight!

And that's not all! When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend and confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate.

Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships/ (Three Rivers Press, 1998). "Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women," explains Dr. Josselson. "We push them right to the back burner. That's really a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're with other women. It's a very healing experience."

Study: Dinosaur demise didn't spur species

NEW YORK, Associated Press - The big dinosaur extinction of 65 million years ago didn't produce a flurry of new species in the ancestry of modern mammals after all, says a huge study that challenges a long-standing theory.

Scientists who constructed a massive evolutionary family tree for mammals found no sign of such a burst of new species at that time among the ancestors of present-day animals.

Only mammals with no modern-day descendants showed that effect.

"I was flabbergasted," said study co-author Ross MacPhee, curator of vertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

At the time of the dinosaur demise, mammals were small, ranging in size between shrews and cats. The long-held view has been that once the dinosaurs were gone, mammals were suddenly free to exploit new food sources and habitats, and as a result they produced a burst of new species.

The new study says that happened to some extent, but that the new species led to evolutionary dead ends. In contrast, no such burst was found for the ancestors of modern-day mammals like rodents, cats, horses, elephants and people.

Instead, they showed an initial burst between 100 million about 85 million years ago, with another between about 55 million and 35 million year ago, researchers report in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

The timing of that first period of evolutionary development generally agrees with the conclusions of some previous studies of mammal DNA, which argue for a much earlier origin of some mammal lineages than the fossil record does.

The second burst had shown up in the fossil record, MacPhee said. But he said the new study explains why scientists have been unable to find relatively modern-looking ancestors of the creatures known from that time: without any evolutionary boost from the dinosaur demise, those ancestors were still relatively primitive.

Some experts praised the large scale of the new evolutionary tree, which used a controversial "supertree" method to combine data covering the vast majority of mammal species. It challenges paleontologists to find new fossils that can shed light on mammal history, said Greg Wilson, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

William J. Murphy of Texas A&M University, who is working on a similar project, said no previous analysis had included so many mammal species.

But, "I don't think this is the final word," he said.

The study's approach for assigning dates was relatively crude, he said, and some dates it produced for particular lineages disagree with those obtained by more updated methods.

So as for its interpretation of what happened when the dinosaurs died off, "I'm not sure that conclusion is well-founded," Murphy said.

John Gittleman, a study co-author and director of the University of Georgia Institute of Ecology, said the researchers considered a range of previously reported dates for when various lineages split. They found the overall conclusions of the study were not significantly affected by which dates they chose, he said.

Researchers should now look at such things as the rise of flowering plants and a cooling of the worldwide climate to explain why ancestors of present-day mammals took off before the dinosaurs died out, Gittleman said. The cause of the later boom is also a mystery, he said.

The study's family tree includes 4,510 species, more than 99 percent of mammal species covered by an authoritative listing published in 1993. (Nearly 300 species have since been added to the listing, but the researchers said that doesn't affect their study's conclusions.) To construct it, the researchers combined previously published work that relied on analysis of DNA, fossils, anatomy and other information.

S. Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Pennsylvania State University, said the new work "pushes the envelope in the methods and data, and that's really important."

He said the demise of the dinosaurs may have affected mammal evolution by influencing characteristics like body size rather than boosting the number of new species created. Such changes wouldn't be picked up by the new study, he noted.

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On the Net:

Justice? What a joke

By Jonathan Turley, USA Today

Texas Rep. Wayne Smith is tired of hearing about parents missing meetings with their children's teachers. His proposed solution is simple: Prosecute such parents as criminals. In Louisiana, state Sen. Derrick Shepherd is tired of seeing teenagers wearing popular low-rider pants that show their undergarments - so he would like to criminally charge future teenagers who are caught "riding low."

Across the USA, legislators are criminalizing everything from spitting on a school bus to speaking on a cellphone while driving. Criminalizing bad behavior has become the rage among politicians, who view such action as a type of legislative exclamation point demonstrating the seriousness of their cause. As a result, new crimes are proliferating at an alarming rate, and we risk becoming a nation of criminals where carelessness or even rudeness is enough to secure a criminal record.

There was a time when having a criminal record meant something. Indeed, it was the social stigma or shame of such charges that deterred many people from "a life of crime." In both England and the USA, there was once a sharp distinction between criminal and negligent conduct; the difference between the truly wicked and the merely stupid.

Legislators, however, discovered that criminalization was a wonderful way to outdo one's opponents on popular issues. Thus, when deadbeat dads became an issue, legislators rushed to make missing child payments a crime rather than rely on civil judgments. When cellphone drivers became a public nuisance, a new crime was born. Unnecessary horn honking, speaking loudly on a cellphone and driving without a seat belt are only a few of the new crimes. If you care enough about child support, littering, or abandoned pets, you are expected to care enough to make their abuse a crime.

High crimes

Consider the budding criminal career of Kay Leibrand. The 61-year-old grandmother lived a deceptively quiet life in Palo Alto, Calif., until the prosecutors outed her as a habitual horticultural offender. It appears that she allowed her hedge bushes to grow more than 2 feet high - a crime in the city. Battling cancer, Leibrand had allowed her shrubbery to grow into a criminal enterprise. (After her arraignment and shortly before her jury trial, she was allowed to cut down her bushes and settle the case.)

Of course, it is better to be a criminal horticulturalist than a serial snacker. In 2000, on her way home from her junior high school in Washington, D.C., 12-year-old Ansche Hedgepeth grabbed some french fries and ate them as she went into the train station. In Washington, it is a crime to "consume food or drink" in a Metrorail facility. An undercover officer arrested her, searched her and confiscated her shoelaces.

Running out of adult targets, many state laws pursue the toddler and preteen criminal element. In Texas, children have been charged for chewing gum or, in one case, simply removing the lid from a fire alarm. Dozens of kids have been charged with everything from terrorism to criminal threats for playing with toy guns or drawing violent doodles in school.

In the federal system, Congress has been in a virtual criminalization frenzy. There are more than 4,000 crimes and roughly 10,000 regulations with criminal penalties in the federal system alone. Just last year, Congress made it a crime to sell horse meat for human consumption - a common practice in Europe where it is considered a delicacy. Congress has also criminalized such things as disruptive conduct by animal activists and using the image of Smokey Bear or Woodsy Owl or the 4-H club insignia without authorization.

The ability to deter negligence with criminal charges has always been questioned by academics. Negligent people are, by definition, acting in a thoughtless, unpremeditated, or careless way. Nevertheless, prosecutors will often stretch laws to make a popular point - even when the perpetrators have suffered greatly and shown complete remorse.

In 2002, Kevin Kelly was charged criminally in Manassas, Va., when his daughter, less than 2 years old, was left in the family van and died of hyperthermia. With his wife in Ireland with another daughter, Kelly watched over their 12 other children. He relied on his teenage daughters to help unload the van and did not realize the mistake until it was too late.

The suggestion that people like Kelly need a criminal conviction to think about the safety of their children is absurd. Kelly was widely viewed as a loving father, who was devastated by the loss. The conviction only magnified the tragedy for this family. (Though the prosecutors sought jail time, Kelly was sentenced to seven years probation, with one day in jail a year to think about his daughter's death.)

The cost to all of us

The criminalization of America might come as a boon for politicians, but it comes at considerable cost for citizens and society. For citizens, a criminal record can affect everything from employment to voting to child custody - not to mention ruinous legal costs.

Yet, it now takes only a fleeting mistake to cross the line into criminal conduct. In Virginia, when a child accused Dawn McCann of swearing at a bus stop, she was charged criminally - as have been other people accused of the crime of public profanity.

Our insatiable desire to turn everything into a crime is creating a Gulag America with 714 incarcerated persons per 100,000 - the highest rate in the world. Millions of people are charged each year with new criminal acts that can stretch from first-degree murder to failing to shovel their sidewalks.

We can find better ways to deal with runaway bushes, castaway pets, or even potty-mouth problems. Congress and the states should create independent commissions to review their laws in order to decriminalize negligent conduct, limiting criminal charges to true crimes and true criminals. In the end, a crime means nothing if anyone can be a criminal.

American dream becomes nightmare as millions face foreclosure

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The dream of home ownership could turn into a living nightmare for millions of Americans in the next couple of years as home foreclosures are expected to skyrocket.

Alarmed lawmakers, such as Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, say the recent spike in home repossessions is just "the tip of the iceberg."

The fizz came out of the US housing boom last year after several years of stellar growth, fueled in part by a speculative binge, but also by sales of "exotic mortgages" including adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs).

Consumer advocates say such loans are costing many working class families an "ARM and a leg," and that buyers were often unaware ARMs can start out with a low "teaser" interest rate that fast kicks into a much higher rate.

Pressure is mounting on Congress to rein in unscrupulous lenders.

"Predatory practices need to end immediately and solutions must be designed to help the millions of distressed Americans who have mortgages they cannot afford," said Kirsten Keefe, a consumer lawyer and the executive director of Americans for Fairness in Lending.

Democratic presidential contender Senator Chris Dodd says the emerging "crisis" could see over two million Americans lose their homes to foreclosure in the next few years. Such grim predictions are backed by some industry analysts.

Over 500,000 mortgages, or 1.19 percent of all loans, were in foreclosure at the end of the fourth quarter 2006, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association which reported over 43 million loans in total outstanding at the end of last year.

A main focus has been "subprime" loans, or mortgages marketed to people with poor credit histories, now seeing the worst problems.

Jennie Haliburton, a 77-year-old widow, told a congressional hearing chaired by Dodd on Thursday that she took out an ARM loan with Countrywide Financial Corporation, one of the US' biggest mortgage lenders, without realizing her monthly repayments would leap from an initial 700 dollars to 1,100 dollars.

Federal banking regulators have also told Congress they are worried about rising foreclosures, especially in the subprime sector.

Mortgage executives promised Congress they would tighten up their standards, but cautioned against tighter regulation.

Top Federal Reserve officials have tried to soothe fears about the housing downturn and the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported a surprise 3.9 percent rise in February existing home sales Friday.

But, as the sum of delinquent mortgage loans has swelled to around 150 billion dollars' worth, some like Democratic senator Robert Menendez (news, bio, voting record) believe the country could be on the cusp of a foreclosure "tsunami."

Pessimists seeking evidence of a gathering storm do not have to look far.

Several mortgage lenders, who mainly sold subprime loans, including People's Choice Home Loan, Inc., Ownit Mortgage Solutions Inc., and ResMae Mortgage Corp, have filed for bankruptcy in recent months.

British banking giant HSBC has set aside over 10 billion dollars to guard against sour home loans, and H&R Block Inc announced over 15 million dollars in mortgage-related losses earlier this month.

Aside from rising consumer complaints, such as those voiced by Keefe and Haliburton, concern is also increasing that major Wall Street banks could see their profits dented by the mortgage market.

A spokeswoman for Dodd said the senator is mulling whether to back legislation to improve lending standards and media reports suggest House lawmakers are moving to author a bill to check industry excesses.

Speculators "flipped" houses to make a quick profit during the boom, but the NAR report showed prices in some regions have fallen.

As a result, some speculators could owe more to a mortgage firm than they might be able to sell their properties for.

The wealthy are also feeling the squeeze and being forced to offer sales "carrots," such as a new Porsche, golf membership or free plasma televisions in a bid to sell million dollar mansions.

Some analysts argue, however, that it is not all doom and gloom.

Study: Alcohol, tobacco worse than drugs

LONDON, Associated Press - New "landmark" research finds that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than some illegal drugs like marijuana or Ecstasy and should be classified as such in legal systems, according to a new British study.

In research published Friday in The Lancet magazine, Professor David Nutt of Britain's Bristol University and colleagues proposed a new framework for the classification of harmful substances, based on the actual risks posed to society. Their ranking listed alcohol and tobacco among the top 10 most dangerous substances.

Nutt and colleagues used three factors to determine the harm associated with any drug: the physical harm to the user, the drug's potential for addiction, and the impact on society of drug use. The researchers asked two groups of experts — psychiatrists specializing in addiction and legal or police officials with scientific or medical expertise — to assign scores to 20 different drugs, including heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy, amphetamines, and LSD.

Nutt and his colleagues then calculated the drugs' overall rankings. In the end, the experts agreed with each other — but not with the existing British classification of dangerous substances.

Heroin and cocaine were ranked most dangerous, followed by barbiturates and street methadone. Alcohol was the fifth-most harmful drug and tobacco the ninth most harmful. Cannabis came in 11th, and near the bottom of the list was Ecstasy.

According to existing British and U.S. drug policy, alcohol and tobacco are legal, while cannabis and Ecstasy are both illegal. Previous reports, including a study from a parliamentary committee last year, have questioned the scientific rationale for Britain's drug classification system.

"The current drug system is ill thought-out and arbitrary," said Nutt, referring to the United Kingdom's practice of assigning drugs to three distinct divisions, ostensibly based on the drugs' potential for harm. "The exclusion of alcohol and tobacco from the Misuse of Drugs Act is, from a scientific perspective, arbitrary," write Nutt and his colleagues in The Lancet.

Tobacco causes 40 percent of all hospital illnesses, while alcohol is blamed for more than half of all visits to hospital emergency rooms. The substances also harm society in other ways, damaging families and occupying police services.

Nutt hopes that the research will provoke debate within the UK and beyond about how drugs — including socially acceptable drugs such as alcohol — should be regulated. While different countries use different markers to classify dangerous drugs, none use a system like the one proposed by Nutt's study, which he hopes could serve as a framework for international authorities.

"This is a landmark paper," said Dr. Leslie Iversen, professor of pharmacology at Oxford University. Iversen was not connected to the research. "It is the first real step towards an evidence-based classification of drugs." He added that based on the paper's results, alcohol and tobacco could not reasonably be excluded.

"The rankings also suggest the need for better regulation of the more harmful drugs that are currently legal, i.e. tobacco and alcohol," wrote Wayne Hall, of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, in an accompanying Lancet commentary. Hall was not involved with Nutt's paper.

While experts agreed that criminalizing alcohol and tobacco would be challenging, they said that governments should review the penalties imposed for drug abuse and try to make them more reflective of the actual risks and damages involved.

Analysis: White House likes its secrets

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - The White House's limited offer of documents and interviews in the controversial firing of U.S. attorneys fits its track record of secrecy.

From the time he walked into the Oval Office, President Bush has tried to tighten the government's hold on information and restrict public scrutiny. He says he's defending the executive branch from encroachment by overzealous lawmakers and needs to make sure that he and the presidents who follow him have the chance to get confidential advice from advisers.

That push to strengthen the powers of the presidency and clamp down on public disclosure, however, is now contributing to lawmakers' wariness of the White House's latest offer in the U.S. attorney dispute.

"There is no doubt that the Democrats in Congress are strengthened by their perception of public opinion, which appears to be that the White House has not been forthcoming on this and other issues," said Karl Racine, a former associate White House counsel who advised President Clinton and members of his staff on civil and criminal investigation matters.

Critics of the Bush White House's penchant toward secrecy point to: Bush's executive order restricting the public release of the papers of past presidents; his move just after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to clamp down on the declassification of government documents; and the fight, all the way to the Supreme Court, to keep secret closed-door meetings of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force.

They criticize Bush's refusal to allow then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify before the panel investigating the 9/11 attacks (though he eventually relented in the face of bipartisan pressure). And they disapprove of Bush authorizing programs to eavesdrop on Americans' international communications with suspected terrorists without warrants. He acknowledged them only after news reports revealed their existence.

"I think the White House is now reaping what it has sowed by its high-handed approach to congressional requests for information," said Steven Aftergood, who runs the government secrecy project for the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists.

Bush has made what the White House describes as a take-it-or-leave-it, final offer to resolve the standoff over whether eight U.S. attorneys were improperly fired — or for political reasons, as some Democrats suggest.

In what he called a very reasonable proposal, the president offered to make key aides available for private interviews not conducted under oath or transcribed. He also said he would release all White House documents and e-mails involving direct communications with the Justice Department or any outside person, including members of Congress, on this issue.

Demanding fuller disclosure, Democrats want Bush advisers to answer questions publicly, under oath, and provide in-house documents, not just communications between White House and non-West Wingers.

Congress is going to have access to all the facts, "so I don't understand how that's stonewalling," White House press secretary Tony Snow said Wednesday in response to Democratic criticism.

So far, Congress is not buying Bush's argument. A House subcommittee authorized subpoenas for political adviser Karl Rove and other top White House aides. A Senate committee is ready to follow suit on Thursday.

"I believe that we are seeing the result of years of accumulated anger and frustration by members of both parties with the administration," said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.

Last week, the House voted to limit no-bid federal contracts, alleging abuses and citing huge losses in contracts for Hurricane Katrina recovery and Iraq reconstruction. The Accountability in Contracting Act was the last of five open-government bills the House passed this week under new Democratic leaders critical of what they say has been the closed and secretive nature of the Bush administration.

The other measures would:

_Require that contributors to the Bush presidential library make their donations public.

_Overturn a directive by Bush making it easier for current and former presidents to withhold their records from historians and the public.

_Give the public and the media more clout in getting sometimes-reluctant federal agencies to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests.

_Expand whistle-blower protections, specifically for national security officials, airport screeners and government scientists who say they experience political pressure or retaliation because of their research.

The White House has threatened vetoes if the presidential records or the whistle-blower bills reach Bush's desk.

Fights between Congress and the president's prerogative to get unfettered advise from advisers are not new.

In 1974, President Nixon tried to use executive privilege to avoid turning over his secret White House tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor. The Supreme Court ruled against Nixon, who later resigned when impeachment seemed imminent.

Clinton invoked or threatened to assert executive privilege during the Monica Lewinsky investigation, impeachment and other matters. He also invoked executive privilege to block documents sought by the independent counsel investigating Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy. During the perjury and obstruction probe of the president that led to his impeachment, Clinton considered and dropped a variety of privilege claims. They were thought unlikely to stand up in court.

The round with this president has just begun.

"..the infinite suns, the infinite distances between them, and yourself, an invisible dot upon an invisible dot, infinitely small..." - Garggavarr, "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Mathematicians solve E8 structure

WASHINGTON (AFP) - After four years of intensive collaboration, 18 top mathematicians and computer scientists from the United States and Europe have successfully mapped E8, one of the largest and most complicated structures in mathematics, scientists said late Sunday.

Jeffrey Adams, project leader and mathematics professor at the University of Maryland said E8 was discovered over a century ago, in 1887, and until now, no one thought the structure could ever be understood.

"This groundbreaking achievement is significant both as an advance in basic knowledge, as well as a major advance in the use of large scale computing to solve complicated mathematical problems," Adams said.

He added that the mapping of E8 may well have unforeseen implications in mathematics and physics which won't be evident for years to come.

E8 belongs to so-called Lie groups that were invented by a 19th century Norwegian mathematician, Sophus Lie, to study symmetry.

The theory holds that underlying any symmetrical object, such as a sphere, is a Lie group.

Balls, cylinders or cones are familiar examples of symmetric three-dimensional objects.

However, mathematicians study symmetries in higher dimensions. In fact, E8 itself is 248-dimensional.

Today string theorists search for a theory of the universe by looking at E8 X E8.

The scientists said the magnitude of the E8 calculation invited comparison with the Human Genome Project.

While the human genome, which contains all the genetic information of a cell, is less than a gigabyte in size, the result of the E8 calculation, which contains all the information about E8, is 60 gigabytes in size, they said.

There is real water on Mars, close enough to allow us to build a colony even if we haven't mastered interstellar travel yet. That means there is actually a real chance the species might survive totally fucking up this planet. Even though we honestly don't deserve such a chance, but hey, mysterious ways and all that...

Immense Ice Deposits Found At South Pole of Mars

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A spacecraft orbiting Mars has scanned huge deposits of water ice at its south pole so plentiful they would blanket the planet in 36 feet of water if they were liquid, scientists said on Thursday.

The scientists used a joint NASA-Italian Space Agency radar instrument on the European Space Agency Mars Express spacecraft to gauge the thickness and volume of ice deposits at the Martian south pole covering an area larger than Texas.

The deposits, up to 2.3 miles thick, are under a polar cap of white frozen carbon dioxide and water, and appear to be composed of at least 90 percent frozen water, with dust mixed in, according to findings published in the journal Science.

Scientists have known that water exists in frozen form at the Martian poles, but this research produced the most accurate measurements of just how much there is.

They are eager to learn about the history of water on Mars because water is fundamental to the question of whether the planet has ever harbored microbial or some other life. Liquid water is a necessity for life as we know it.

Characteristics like channels on the Martian surface strongly suggest the planet once was very wet, a contrast to its present arid, dusty condition.

Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who led the study, said the same techniques are being used to examine similar ice deposits at the Martian north pole.

Radar observations made in late 2005 and early 2006 provided the data on the south pole, and similar observations were taken of the north pole in the past several months, Plaut said.

Plaut, part of an international team of two dozen scientists, said a preliminary look at this data indicated the ice deposits in at the north pole are comparable to those at the south pole.

SEARCH FOR LIFE

"Life as we know it requires water and, in fact, at least transient liquid water for cells to survive and reproduce. So if we are expecting to find existing life on Mars we need to go to a location where water is available," Plaut said.

"So the polar regions are naturally a target because we certainly know that there's plenty of H2O there."

Some of the new information even hints at the possible existence of a thin layer of liquid water at the base of the deposits.

But while images taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft made public in December suggested the presence of a small amount of liquid water on the surface, researchers are baffled about the fate of most of the water. The polar deposits contain most of the known water on Mars.

Plaut said the amount of water in the Martian past may have been the equivalent of a global layer hundreds of meters deep, while the polar deposits represent a layer of perhaps tens of meters.

"We have this continuing question facing us in studies of Mars, which is: where did all the water go?" Plaut said.

"Even if you took the water in these two (polar) ice caps and added it all up, it's still not nearly enough to do all of the work that we've seen that the water has done across the surface of Mars in its history."

White House seeks to cut geothermal research funds

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Bush administration wants to eliminate federal support for geothermal power just as many U.S. states are looking to cut greenhouse gas emissions and raise renewable power output.

The move has angered scientists who say there is enough hot water underground to meet all U.S. electricity needs without greenhouse gas emissions.

"The Department of Energy has not requested funds for geothermal research in our fiscal-year 2008 budget," said Christina Kielich, a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy. "Geothermal is a mature technology. Our focus is on breakthrough energy research and development."

The administration of George W. Bush has made renewable energy a priority as it seeks to wean the United States off foreign oil, but it emphasizes use of biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel for vehicles and nuclear research for electricity.

"In spite of its enormous potential, the geothermal option for the United States has been largely ignored," a recent study led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said.

Last year, the DOE requested no funding for geothermal for the 2007 fiscal year, after funding averaged about $26 million over the previous six years, but Congress restored $5 million. This year, the DOE's $24.3 billion budget request includes a 38 percent federal spending increase for nuclear power, but nothing for geothermal.

Advocates say they hope Congress can restore at least $25 million in funding to keep geothermal research on track.

"It's too early to pick our resources. We need them all," said Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association.

New geothermal power projects by 2050 could provide 100,000 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power about 80 million U.S. homes, or as much as U.S. nuclear power plants make today, the MIT study said.

But U.S. geothermal development will need $300 million to $400 million over 15 years to make this type of power competitive versus other forms of power generation, the study said.

The big hurdle for geothermal power is finding out where the hot water is and developing better ways to drill for it. Geothermal power plants use steam or water from underground to turn turbines to create electricity.

Recreational hot springs across the United States are examples of where geothermal is easy to access. To be a viable power generator, hot water a mile or more underground has to be developed, said Gawell of the Geothermal Energy Association.

Leland "Roy" Mink, who until last October was geothermal program director at the DOE, said he thinks the White House's waning interest in geothermal is a mistake. He said he left the DOE when he saw the Department was cutting funding.

"It's far from a mature technology," said Mink, who is now working on a geothermal project in Idaho. "There's a lot to do. For starters, we need to develop drill bits that last longer. It's a hostile environment down there."

Now they wanna get out of paying taxes altogether.

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Halliburton will move HQ to Dubai

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Associated Press - Oil services giant Halliburton Co. will soon shift its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Mideast financial powerhouse of Dubai, chief executive Dave Lesar announced Sunday.

"Halliburton is opening its corporate headquarters in Dubai while maintaining a corporate office in Houston," spokeswoman Cathy Mann said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "The chairman, president and CEO will office from and be based in Dubai to run the company from the UAE."

Lesar, speaking at an energy conference in nearby Bahrain, said he will relocate to Dubai from Texas to oversee Halliburton's intensified focus on business in the Mideast and energy-hungry Asia, home to some of the world's most important oil and gas markets.

"As the CEO, I'm responsible for the global business of Halliburton in both hemispheres and I will continue to spend quite a bit of time in an airplane as I remain attentive to our customers, shareholders and employees around the world," Lesar said. "Yes, I will spend the majority of my time in Dubai."

Lesar's announcement appears to signal one of the highest-profile moves by a U.S. corporate leader to Dubai, an Arab boomtown where free-market capitalism has been paired with some of the world's most liberal tax, investment and residency laws.

"The eastern hemisphere is a market that is more heavily weighted toward oil exploration and production opportunities and growing our business here will bring more balance to Halliburton's overall portfolio," Lesar said.

In 2006, Halliburton — once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney — earned profits of $2.3 billion on revenues of $22.6 billion.

More than 38 percent of Halliburton's $13 billion oil field services revenue last year stemmed from sources in the eastern hemisphere, where the firm has 16,000 of its 45,000 employees.

Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive from 1995-2000 and the Bush administration has been accused of favoring the conglomerate with lucrative no-bid contracts in

Iraq.

Federal investigators last month alleged Halliburton was responsible for $2.7 billion of the $10 billion in contractor waste and overcharging in Iraq.

Halliburton last month announced a 40-percent decline in fourth-quarter profit, despite heavy demand for its oil field equipment and personnel.

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Biofuels boom raises tough questions

NEW YORK, Asoociated Press - America is drunk on ethanol. Farmers in the Midwest are sending billions of bushels of corn to refineries that turn it into billions of gallons of fuel. Automakers in Detroit have already built millions of cars, trucks and SUVs that can run on it, and are committed to making millions more. In Washington, politicians have approved generous subsidies for companies that make ethanol.

And just this week, President Bush arranged with Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for their countries to share ethanol production technology.

Even alternative fuel aficionados are surprised at the nation's sudden enthusiasm for grain alcohol.

"It's coming on dramatically; more rapidly than anyone had expected," said Nathanael Greene, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

You'd think that would be good news, but it actually worries a lot of people.

The problem is, ethanol really isn't ready for prime time. The only economical way to make ethanol right now is with corn, which means the burgeoning industry is literally eating America's lunch, not to mention its breakfast and dinner. And though ethanol from corn may have some minor benefits with regard to energy independence, most analysts conclude its environmental benefits are questionable at best.

Proponents acknowledge the drawbacks of corn-based ethanol, but they believe it can help wean America off imported oil the way methadone helps a junkie kick heroin. It may not be ideal, but ethanol could help the country make the necessary and difficult transition to an environmentally and economically sustainable future.

There are many questions about ethanol's place in America's energy future. Some are easily answered; others, not so much.

WHAT IS ETHANOL?

Ethanol is moonshine. Hooch. Rotgut. White lightning. That explains why the last time Americans produced it in any appreciable amount was during Prohibition. Today, just like back then, virtually all the ethanol produced in the United States comes from corn that is fermented and then distilled to produce pure grain alcohol.

WILL MY CAR RUN ON IT?

Any car will burn gasoline mixed with a small amount of ethanol. But cars must be equipped with special equipment to burn fuel that is more than about 10 percent ethanol. All three of the major American automakers are already producing flex-fuel cars that can run on either gasoline or E85, a mix of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Thanks to incentives from the federal government, they have committed to having half the cars they produce run on either E85 or biodiesel by 2012.

HOW FAST IS ETHANOL PRODUCTION GROWING?

About as fast as farmers can grow the corn to make it. According to the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group, ethanol production has doubled in the past three years, reaching nearly 5 billion gallons in 2006. With 113 ethanol plants currently operating and 78 more under construction, the country's ethanol output is expected to double again in less than two years.

IS ETHANOL BETTER THAN GASOLINE?

For all the environmental and economic troubles it causes, gasoline turns out to be a remarkably efficient automobile fuel. The energy required to pump crude out of the ground, refine it and transport it from oil well to gas tank is about 6 percent of the energy in the gasoline itself.

Ethanol is much less efficient, especially when it is made from corn. Just growing corn requires expending energy — plowing, planting, fertilizing and harvesting all require machinery that burns fossil fuel. Modern agriculture relies on large amounts of fertilizer and pesticides, both of which are produced by methods that consume fossil fuels. Then there's the cost of transporting the corn to an ethanol plant, where the fermentation and distillation processes consume yet more energy. Finally, there's the cost of transporting the fuel to filling stations. And because ethanol is more corrosive than gasoline, it can't be pumped through relatively efficient pipelines, but must be transported by rail or tanker truck.

In the end, even the most generous analysts estimate that it takes the energy equivalent of three gallons of ethanol to make four gallons of the stuff. Some even argue that it takes more energy to produce ethanol from corn than you get out of it, but most agricultural economists think that's a stretch.

BUT AREN'T THERE ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS TO ETHANOL?

If you make ethanol from corn, the environmental benefits are limited. When you consider the greenhouse gases that are released in the growing and refining process, corn-based ethanol is only slightly better with regard to global warming than gasoline. Growing corn also requires the use of pesticides and fertilizers that cause soil and water pollution.

The environmental benefit of corn-based ethanol is felt mostly around the tailpipe. When blended into gasoline in small amounts, ethanol causes the fuel to generate less smog-producing carbon monoxide. That has made it popular in smoggy cities like Los Angeles.

WHAT ABOUT ETHANOL'S ECONOMIC BENEFITS?

Making ethanol is so profitable, thanks to government subsidies and continued high oil prices, that plants are proliferating throughout the Corn Belt. Iowa, the nation's top corn-producing state, is projected to have so many ethanol plants by 2008 it could easily find itself importing corn in order to feed them.

But that depends on the Invisible Hand. Making ethanol is profitable when oil is costly and corn is cheap. And the 51 cent-a-gallon federal subsidy doesn't hurt. But oil prices are off from last year's peaks and corn has doubled in price over the past year, from about $2 to $4 a bushel, thanks mostly to demand from ethanol producers.

High corn prices are causing social unrest in Mexico, where the government has tried to mollify angry consumers by slapping price controls on tortillas. Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, predicts food riots in other major corn-importing countries if something isn't done.

U.S. consumers will soon feel the effects of high corn prices as well, if they haven't already, because virtually everything Americans put in their mouths starts as corn. There's corn flakes, corn chips, corn nuts, and hundreds of other processed foods that don't even have the word corn in them. There's corn in the occasional pint of beer and shot of whisky. And don't forget high fructose corn syrup, a sweetener that is added to soft drinks, baked goods, candy and a lot of things that aren't even sweet.

Some freaks even eat it off the cob.

It's true that animals eat more than half of the corn produced in America; guess who eats them? On Friday the Agriculture Department announced that beef, pork and chicken will soon cost consumers more thanks to the demand of ethanol for corn.

It's also true that there's a difference between edible sweet corn and the feed corn that's used for ethanol production. But because farmers try to grow the most profitable crop they can, higher prices for feed corn tend to discourage the production of sweet corn. That decreases its supply, driving the price of sweet corn up, too.

In fact, many agricultural economists believe rising demand for feed corn has squeezed the supply — and boosted the price — of not just sweet corn but also wheat, soybeans and several other crops.

America's appetite for corn is enormous. But Americans consume so much gasoline that all the corn in the world couldn't make enough ethanol to slake the nation's lust for transportation fuels. Last year ethanol production used 12 percent of the U.S. corn harvest, but it replaced only 2.8 percent of the nation's gasoline consumption.

"If we were to adopt automobile fuel efficiency standards to increase efficiency by 20 percent, that would contribute as much as converting the entire U.S. grain harvest into ethanol," Brown said.

ISN'T THERE A BETTER RENEWABLE FUEL SUBSTITUTE FOR GASOLINE?

Most experts think it will take an array of renewable energy technologies to replace fossil fuels. Ethanol's main drawbacks come not from the nature of the fuel itself, but from the fact that it is made using a critical component of the world's food supply. Ethanol would be more beneficial both environmentally and economically if scientists could figure out how to make it from a nonfood plant that could be grown without the need for fertilizers, pesticides and other inputs. Researchers are currently working on methods to do just that, making ethanol from the cellulose in a wide variety of plants, including poplar trees, switchgrass and cornstalks.

But plant cellulose is more difficult to break down than the starch in corn kernels. That's why people eat corn instead of grass. Plus it tastes better.

There are also technical hurdles related to separating, digesting and fermenting the cellulose fiber. Though it can be done, making ethanol from cellulose-rich material costs at least twice as much as making it from corn.

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE BEFORE CELLULOSIC ETHANOL IS COMPETITIVE WITH CORN ETHANOL AND GASOLINE?

Some experts estimate that it will take 10 to 15 years before cellulosic ethanol becomes competitive. But Mitch Mandich, CEO of Range Fuels, thinks it will be a lot sooner than that. The Colorado-based company has started building a cellulosic ethanol plant in Georgia that converts wood chips and other waste left behind by the forest products industry. Another company, Iogen Corp., has been producing cellulosic ethanol from wheat, oat and barley straw for several years at a demonstration plant in Ottawa, Canada.

HOW MUCH MORE EFFICIENT WOULD CELLULOSIC ETHANOL BE COMPARED TO CORN ETHANOL?

Studies suggest that cellulosic ethanol could yield at least four to six times the energy expended to produce it. It would also produce less greenhouse gas emissions than corn-based ethanol because much of the energy needed to refine it could come not from fossil fuels, but from burning other chemical components of the very same plants that contained the cellulose.

HOW MUCH GASOLINE COULD CELLULOSIC ETHANOL REPLACE?

The U.S.

Department of Energy estimates that the United States could produce more than a billion tons of cellulosic material annually for ethanol production, from switchgrass grown on marginal agricultural lands to wood chips and other waste produced by the timber industry. In theory, that material could produce enough ethanol to substitute for about 30 percent of the country's oil consumption.

A University of Tennessee study released in November reached similar conclusions. As much as 100 million acres of land would have to be dedicated to energy crops in order to reach the goal of substituting renewable biofuels for 25 percent of the nation's fuel consumption by 2025, the report estimated. That would be a significant fraction of the nation's 800 million acres of cultivable land, the study's authors said, but not enough to cause disruptions in agricultural markets.

"There really aren't any losers," said University of Tennessee agricultural economist Burton English.

REALLY? NO LOSERS AT ALL?

There might be losers. Simple economics dictates that if farmers find it more profitable to grow switchgrass rather than corn, soy or cotton, the price of those commodities is bound to rise in response to falling supply.

"You can produce a lot of ethanol from cellulose without competing with food," said Wallace Tyner, an agricultural economist at Purdue University. "But if you want to get half your fuel supply from it you will compete with food agriculture."

There may also be ecological impacts. The government currently pays farmers not to farm about 35 million acres of conservation land, mostly in the Midwest. Those fallow tracts provide valuable habitat for wildlife, especially birds. Though switchgrass is a good home for most birds, if it became profitable to grow it or another energy crop on conservation land some species could decline.

WILL ETHANOL SOLVE ALL OF OUR PROBLEMS?

Ethanol is certainly a valuable tool in our efforts to address the economic and environmental problems associated with fossil fuels. But even the most optimistic projections suggest it can only replace a fraction of the 140 billion gallons of gasoline that Americans consume every year. It will take a mix of technologies to achieve energy independence and reduce the country's production of greenhouse gases.

"I think we're in a very interesting era. We are recognizing a problem and we are finding lots of potential solutions," said David Tilman, an ecologist at the University of Minnesota.

But if we're serious about achieving energy independence and mitigating global warming, Tilman and other experts said, one of those solutions must be energy conservation.

Climate report warns of drought, disease

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium.

At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press.

Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive.

For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised.

The draft document by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on global warming's effects and is the second in a series of four being issued this year. Written and reviewed by more than 1,000 scientists from dozens of countries, it still must be edited by government officials.

But some scientists said the overall message is not likely to change when it's issued in early April in Brussels, the same city where European Union leaders agreed this past week to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Their plan will be presented to President Bush and other world leaders at a summit in June.

The report offers some hope if nations slow and then reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, but it notes that what's happening now isn't encouraging.

"Changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent," the report says, in marked contrast to a 2001 report by the same international group that said the effects of global warming were coming. But that report only mentioned scattered regional effects.

"Things are happening and happening faster than we expected," said Patricia Romero Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., one of the many co-authors of the new report.

The draft document says scientists are highly confident that many current problems — change in species' habits and habitats, more acidified oceans, loss of wetlands, bleaching of coral reefs, and increases in allergy-inducing pollen — can be blamed on global warming.

For example, the report says North America "has already experienced substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from recent climate extremes," such as hurricanes and wildfires.

But the present is nothing compared to the future.

Global warming soon will "affect everyone's life ... it's the poor sectors that will be most affected," Romero Lankao said.

And co-author Terry Root of Stanford University said: "We truly are standing at the edge of mass extinction" of species.

The report included these likely results of global warming:

_Hundreds of millions of Africans and tens of millions of Latin Americans who now have water will be short of it in less than 20 years. By 2050, more than 1 billion people in Asia could face water shortages. By 2080, water shortages could threaten 1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people, depending on the level of greenhouse gases that cars and industry spew into the air.

_Death rates for the world's poor from global warming-related illnesses, such as malnutrition and diarrhea, will rise by 2030. Malaria and dengue fever, as well as illnesses from eating contaminated shellfish, are likely to grow.

_Europe's small glaciers will disappear with many of the continent's large glaciers shrinking dramatically by 2050. And half of Europe's plant species could be vulnerable, endangered or extinct by 2100.

_By 2080, between 200 million and 600 million people could be hungry because of global warming's effects.

_About 100 million people each year could be flooded by 2080 by rising seas.

_Smog in U.S. cities will worsen and "ozone-related deaths from climate (will) increase by approximately 4.5 percent for the mid-2050s, compared with 1990s levels," turning a small health risk into a substantial one.

_Polar bears in the wild and other animals will be pushed to extinction.

_At first, more food will be grown. For example, soybean and rice yields in Latin America will increase starting in a couple of years. Areas outside the tropics, especially the northern latitudes, will see longer growing seasons and healthier forests.

Looking at different impacts on ecosystems, industry and regions, the report sees the most positive benefits in forestry and some improved agriculture and transportation in polar regions. The biggest damage is likely to come in ocean and coastal ecosystems, water resources and coastal settlements.

The hardest-hit continents are likely to be Africa and Asia, with major harm also coming to small islands and some aspects of ecosystems near the poles. North America, Europe and Australia are predicted to suffer the fewest of the harmful effects.

"In most parts of the world and most segments of populations, lifestyles are likely to change as a result of climate change," the draft report said. "Net valuations of benefits vs. costs will vary, but they are more likely to be negative if climate change is substantial and rapid, rather than if it is moderate and gradual."

This report — considered by some scientists the "emotional heart" of climate change research — focuses on how global warming alters the planet and life here, as opposed to the more science-focused report by the same group last month.

"This is the story. This is the whole play. This is how it's going to affect people. The science is one thing. This is how it affects me, you and the person next door," said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver.

Many — not all — of those effects can be prevented, the report says, if within a generation the world slows down its emissions of carbon dioxide and if the level of greenhouse gases sticking around in the atmosphere stabilizes. If that's the case, the report says "most major impacts on human welfare would be avoided; but some major impacts on ecosystems are likely to occur."

The

United Nations-organized network of 2,000 scientists was established in 1988 to give regular assessments of the Earth's environment. The document issued last month in Paris concluded that scientists are 90 percent certain that people are the cause of global warming and that warming will continue for centuries.

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'Sunshine' laws often go unenforced

Associated Press - Though laws in every state say government records and meetings must be open to all, reality often falls far short: Laws are sporadically enforced, penalties for failure to comply are mild and violators almost always walk away with nothing more than a reprimand, an Associated Press survey of all 50 states has found.

Even in the handful of states that monitor such cases, when citizens appeal over lack of access to information, the government usually wins — and keeps public business secret.

Why does it matter?

Advocates for open government say public trust is at the heart of our democracy, that scrutiny keeps public officials honest, and that information is the foundation of informed debate.

"We're in an era, clearly, where there's a lot of distrust in government," said Bill Chamberlin of the Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project at the University of Florida. "The more the public officials are open in their conversation and show the documentation that they're basing decisions on, it's going to help the public have faith in what officials are doing."

The AP's survey — conducted to coincide with Sunshine Week, a nationwide effort to draw attention to the public's right to know — gathered material from each state on its open government laws and penalties. Additionally, for the years 2004 to 2006, it sought more detail on open government complaints in states with the best record-keeping. The AP found that fewer than 10 states effectively track what happens in such cases.

Looking more closely at those monitoring efforts, a snapshot emerges: Oversight agencies and attorneys general are more likely to rule in favor of government offices that keep documents secret and doors closed. And when they rule that the law was broken? The overwhelming majority of decisions bring a "don't do it again" warning.

In Fort Smith, Ark., a resident fought to learn what city officials were doing when they secretly decided to buy a vacant downtown building. David Harris proved in court that the officials broke the law, but the state Supreme Court last year declined to levy the only punishment possible — the $10,000 in legal fees it cost Harris to make his case.

And in southern Connecticut two years ago, the water authority that oversees a small lake stonewalled a former member who sought financial audits, then went behind closed doors to settle policy on winterizing boats. After the former member complained, the state oversight commission ruled that the authority violated the law, but rejected a request for a civil penalty and instead told officials to make the documents available and be public about their business.

"There is largely a culture in state and local government that violating public meetings and open records laws is not the same as committing a crime," Chamberlin said. "It's largely treated as a nuisance rather than a law."

Those charged with enforcement of open government laws strongly disagree.

They take the law very seriously, they say, but contend a reprimand is usually punishment enough for a local council member or village mayor who is guilty only of misunderstanding the law.

"We think the carrot is preferable to the stick. We use the carrot in almost every case," said Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, who helped toughen his state's open government or "sunshine" statutes when he was a state senator. "Our experience is that local officials want to abide by the law, but they often don't know how."

The AP analysis found that nearly all states have crafted penalties for those who violate sunshine laws, but the majority do little to keep track of how often the law is broken and what the punishment might be.

The federal government does a much better tracking job, but has no provision for punishment and little sympathy for appeals when federal agencies reject requests for documents.

Two states have no penalties at all if someone breaks the law; eight more have no sanctions for one of the two guarantees of open government — open meetings or open documents. In practice, few penalties are ever sought.

Many states allow for people who sue to win attorneys' fees, but place the standard so high — officials have to willfully break the law — that it's rarely met.

Consider a dispute over spending in a volunteer fire department in Riverdale, Iowa, a town of 650 people just up the Mississippi River from Davenport.

Two citizens — an interior designer and a chiropractor — became suspicious of spending in the department, spurred by what they said were drunken come-ons at a Christmas party and the purchase of several ladder trucks in a town with no high-rise buildings. They asked for information. They didn't get it.

But Tammie Picton and Allen Diercks didn't give up. They fought the case themselves, spending two years and $28,000 in legal expenses — and they won.

Now Mayor Norma Wren, who didn't return calls seeking comment, is facing more scrutiny. The state auditor is looking at possible financial mismanagement, and the attorney general has been asked to investigate.

It could be seen as proof the system works, but that's not how the plaintiffs saw their long struggle.

If he didn't push so vigorously, Diercks notes, nothing would have happened. "There are so many loopholes in the law," he said.

Like most states, Iowa's handling of cases is a mixed bag.

It has an oversight body to which citizens can make a complaint, and that office received 445 complaints from 2004 to 2006. But the office ruled that only 63 cases were substantiated. And because it has no enforcement powers, that meant it relied upon the moral weight of its decisions to convince officials to change their behavior. In most cases, a phone call was enough to get officials to relent and make information public, the office reported.

If that doesn't work, people like Diercks can sue or try to convince their local prosecutor to bring action.

Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia have agencies with some central authority to provide guidance or handle complaints of limited government access. But the results still are scattershot.

Just seven states — Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Dakota and Rhode Island — could provide enough information to determine ultimately what happened to complaints. And even in those states, most acknowledged untracked cases could have made their way through the court system.

Each state collects information differently, so drawing broad conclusions is problematic. However, data from those states provide a glimpse at how sunshine law complaints are handled.

For instance, from 2004 to 2006:

• Nebraska's attorney general received 106 complaints. Officials found eight violations — each brought a public reprimand, but no prosecution or fine. One county board was told to vote again in public, not in secret.

• Connecticut's Freedom of Information Commission received 1,893 complaints, ruled on 575 cases and found 219 violations. It levied seven fines, ranging from $50 to $500, and ordered a half-dozen other remedies, including workshops on the law and an order that an ethics commission recreate minutes of a private meeting.

When it comes to the federal government, the vast majority of information requests are for personal records from three agencies — Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs and the

Social Security Administration. They got 19 million requests in 2005 and almost always granted them.

The other federal agencies received just over a half-million queries, with a third of those denied or not fulfilled, according to an analysis of 2005 data by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government. In the relatively few cases that were appealed — under 8,000 — most ended in failure.

Federal officials, along with those from school boards, town councils and state agencies, almost never face sanctions for keeping records secret.

That's fine with some charged with monitoring sunshine laws. The goal is to encourage people in public office to follow the law, not necessarily to punish them.

"The court of public opinion, in my opinion, is much more powerful than the judicial court," said Robert Freeman, head of New York's Committee on Open Government and one of the most widely respected advocates for open government in the country.

New York reflects that philosophy in practice — the state has no penalties, though it recently made it easier to recover attorneys' fees. Freeman's office has only advisory powers. But that's enough, he said.

Florida takes a much different approach in its willingness to punish officials who break the law.

In 2004, a county commissioner who was a former state legislative leader served 49 days of a 60-day jail sentence for violating the open meetings law, becoming the first public official in Florida to do time in such a case.

In 2005, a village commissioner and a mayor of the city of North Bay Village, near Miami, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges that they conspired to oust the city manager and were given probation, community service and fines or court costs that ranged up to $20,000.

Chamberlin, of the University of Florida, argues that the occasional prosecution sends a stronger message than mere warnings.

"One of the arguments by many people is that criminalizing obedience to records and meetings laws is too harsh. I happen to think that it's not too harsh, because it's law," he said. "Punishment does make a difference. ... A couple prosecutions every once in a while wakes people up and they say, 'Hey, my job may be at stake.'"

Last month in Florida, new GOP Gov. Charlie Crist, a former attorney general who championed consumer rights, took another step in enforcement by creating an ombudsman to oversee sunshine cases.

Other states have sporadically moved in recent years to toughen penalties and strengthen their oversight.

Kansas lawmakers required that county prosecutors report all sunshine cases to the attorney general, whose office was to prepare an annual report. But the first report is more than a year overdue.

Bruning, Nebraska's attorney general, successfully pushed a law to make it harder for local officials to charge high costs to people seeking government documents. He now wants a mandatory one-hour training course for every public official, so they know what their citizens' rights are in terms of access to documents and meetings.

"This is critical to the citizens of Nebraska and the citizens of this country," he said. "This gives citizens confidence that government is operating truthfully and honestly and in their best interest."

Still, while legislation would make classes mandatory, it operates under the honor system — no penalty will be levied against those who decide to skip it, Bruning said.

"We're simply trying to educate those that hold the public trust," he said.

I remember all the chest-thumping warhawks bellowing how "we need this to catch terrorists" and "we would never misuse it". What bullshit! Excatly what every sane, rational person feared would happen, has happened: they took this club and bashed the citizenry with it. Oh, and THEY DIDN'T CATCH A SINGLE 'TERRORIST'.

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Justice Dept.: FBI misused Patriot Act

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, underreporting for three years how often it forced businesses to turn over customer data, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.

FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to a 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.

The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct.

Still, "we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities," the audit concludes.

At issue are the security letters, a power outlined in the Patriot Act that the Bush administration pushed through Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The letters, or administrative subpoenas, are used in suspected terrorism and espionage cases. They allow the FBI to require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses to produce highly personal records about their customers or subscribers — without a judge's approval.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller called Fine's audit "a fair and objective review of the FBI's use of a proven and useful investigative tool."

The finding "of deficiencies in our processes is unacceptable," Mueller said in a statement.

"We strive to exercise our authorities consistent with the privacy protections and civil liberties that we are sworn to uphold," Mueller said. "Anything less will not be tolerated. While we've already taken some steps to address these shortcomings, I am ordering additional corrective measures to be taken immediately."

Fine's annual review is required by Congress, over the objections of the Bush administration.

The audit released Friday found that the number of national security letters issued by the FBI skyrocketed in the years after the Patriot Act became law.

In 2000, for example, the FBI issued an estimated 8,500 letters. By 2003, however, that number jumped to 39,000. It rose again the next year, to about 56,000 letters in 2004, and dropped to approximately 47,000 in 2005.

Over the entire three-year period, the audit found the FBI issued 143,074 national security letters requesting customer data from businesses.

The FBI vastly underreported the numbers. In 2005, the FBI told Congress that its agents in 2003 and 2004 had delivered only 9,254 national security letters seeking e-mail, telephone or financial information on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents over the previous two years.

Additionally, the audit found, the FBI identified 26 possible violations in its use of the national security letters, including failing to get proper authorization, making improper requests under the law and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records.

Depends on what your definition of hypocrite is, huh Newt...

Gingrich had affair during Clinton probe

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.

"The honest answer is yes," Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards."

Gingrich argued in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton's infidelity.

"The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge," the former Georgia congressman said of Clinton's 1998 House impeachment on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. "I drew a line in my mind that said, 'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept ... perjury in your highest officials."

Widely considered a mastermind of the Republican revolution that swept Congress in the 1994 elections, Gingrich remains wildly popular among many conservatives. He has repeatedly placed near the top of Republican presidential polls recently, even though he has not formed a campaign.

Gingrich has said he is waiting to see how the Republican field shapes up before deciding in the fall whether to run.

Reports of extramarital affairs have dogged him for years as a result of two messy divorces, but he has refused to discuss them publicly.

Gingrich, who frequently campaigned on family values issues, divorced his second wife, Marianne, in 2000 after his attorneys acknowledged Gingrich's relationship with his current wife, Callista Bisek, a former congressional aide more than 20 years younger than he is.

His first marriage, to his former high school geometry teacher, Jackie Battley, ended in divorce in 1981. Although Gingrich has said he doesn't remember it, Battley has said Gingrich discussed divorce terms with her while she was recuperating in the hospital from cancer surgery.

Gingrich married Marianne months after the divorce.

"There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong. But I was still doing them," he said in the interview. "I look back on those as periods of weakness and periods that I'm ... not proud of."

Gingrich's congressional career ended in 1998 when he abruptly resigned from Congress after poor showings from Republicans in elections and after being reprimanded by the House ethics panel over charges that he used tax-exempt funding to advance his political goals.

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On the Net:

It's not just that she's now calling Dem prez candidate John Edwards a 'faggot'. She's been a vile fetid pool of fascist putrefaction for a long, long time:

"[Clinton] masturbates in the sinks."—Rivera Live, Aug. 2, 1999

"God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.' "—Hannity & Colmes, June 20, 2001

The "backbone of the Democratic Party" is a "typical fat, implacable welfare recipient"—syndicated column, Oct. 29, 1999

To a disabled Vietnam vet: "People like you caused us to lose that war."—MSNBC, Oct. 11, 1997

About 9/11 widows: "Women like Pamela Harriman and Patricia Duff are basically Anna Nicole Smith from the waist down. Let's just call it for what it is. They're whores."—Salon.com, Nov. 16, 2000

"I think there should be a literacy test and a poll tax for people to vote."—Hannity & Colmes, Aug. 17, 1999

"My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism."—MSNBC, Feb. 8, 1997

American kids are fat because they eat junk food. Junk food is mass produced using meat that is corporate farmed using huge amounts of hormones to increase production. You are what you eat, so... stuff kids with hormone-laden foods, you are gonna get fat kids with big tits.

Raise your hand if you personally know a behemoth no-neck 14 year old who already shaves. Seriously, look at this photo of the enormous 13 and 14 year old boys in this typical 8th grade basketball team, compare them with their adult coaches on either side:

Childhood obesity triggers early puberty: study

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Childhood obesity in the United States appears to be causing girls to reach puberty at an earlier age, for reasons that are not clear, a study said on Monday.

The report from the University of Michigan's Mott Children's Hospital said a multiyear study following a group of 354 girls found that those who were fatter at age 3 and who gained weight during the next three years reached puberty, as defined by breast development, by age 9.

"Our finding that increased body fatness is associated with the earlier onset of puberty provides additional evidence that growing rates of obesity among children in this country may be contributing to the trend of early maturation in girls," said Dr. Joyce Lee, the lead author.

"Previous studies had found that girls who have earlier puberty tend to have higher body mass index, but it was unclear whether puberty led to the weight gain or weight gain led to the earlier onset of puberty," she added.

"Our study offers evidence that it is the latter," Lee said.

Earlier studies have found that U.S. girls are reaching puberty earlier than was the case 30 years ago, a time span during which rates of childhood obesity also increased, the study said.

In the study girls were classified as at risk for being overweight if their body mass index (a measurement of weight related to age and height) was between the 85th and 95th percentiles, and defined as overweight if the measurement was greater than the 95th percentile.

The researchers said that 168 of the girls were classified as being "in puberty" by the age of 9 and nearly two dozen reported having their first menstrual period by two years later.

Higher body mass index scores at all ages had a "strong association with earlier onset of puberty, the authors said.

The study was published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.