But Ms Bhutto said she would not be cowed and continued to campaign for the restoration of democracy and, some say, a third term as prime minister.

most voters are unaware that the voting is still open.

Kerry wrote NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on Monday to request the game be seen by the wider football-watching audience..

"I remain deeply troubled that today as many as 250,000 Massachusetts households, and millions of Patriots fans nationwide, may be denied access to this historic sporting event," Kerry wrote.

The Democratic senator also raised the threat of hearings should the NFL not fall on his side.

Milestone in Iraq

Sometime on December 27, 2007, in a fierce gun battle in Al Kut, a milestone was reached. 20,000 terrorists have been killed by our troops in Iraq.

Number 20,000 was a Shia, working for a Special Groups cell supplied by Iran and operating in defiance of Sadr?s orders.

Ministry spokesman Abdul Karim Khalaf also outlined sharp falls in the numbers of assassinations, kidnappings and death squad murders.

"We have destroyed 75 percent of Al-Qaeda hide-outs, and we broke up major criminal networks that supported Al-Qaeda in Baghdad," he said.

"After eliminating safe houses in Anbar province, which used to be Al-Qaedas base, we moved into areas surrounding Baghdad and into Diyala province. Al-Qaeda headed north and we are pursuing them," he said.

Khalaf said kidnappings were down 70 percent and that an average of three to five people killed by death squads were being found each day in Baghdad compared with 15 to 20 a day in February.

Philosophy Pages

 . . . from Garth Kemerling

This site offers helpful information for students of the Western philosophical tradition. The elements you will find on this site include:

Bad Amerika: No Doughnut

Does it piss you off to see America spelled with a ?k??  Why?  What does it mean?  Is it a Cyrillic slur?----Why is it so disturbing? ?America? is an iconic visual gestalt for all that is glorious about freedom, democracy, the dignity of the individual, opportunity, and a host of other idealisms that keep us in the mode of patriotism. But, change one letter and the holograph starts to weaken and become unstable. That which was sure becomes alien and disturbing. The metaphor is easily transferred. Think of ?America? as an armature of law upon which democracy is defined. When the core law adheres to the principles of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Amendments, ancillary documents such as the Declaration of Dependence and two hundred years of refinements ?America? retains its authentic identity.

Grim Brown warns of a bleak year for Britain

In a strong warning, which sets the backdrop for a campaign to revive his premiership, Brown tells Britain to prepare for global financial turbulence in 2008. Our strong economy is the foundation, Brown writes in his new year message. With unbending determination in 2008, we will steer a course of stability through global financial turbulence. The global credit problem that started in America is now the most immediate challenge for every economy.

Taken from Interstate 15 near Brigham City Utah

A Smattering of Categories

ABC News Jan Simmonds Reports: Rudy Giuliani, R-N.Y., today expressed his respect for the Muslim religion in the wake of negative comments made by a high ranking campaign volunteer in New Hampshire.

John Deady, the now former co-chair of the New Hampshire Veterans for Rudy, told The Guardian newspaper last Sunday that Giuliani should be elected President because he understands how to address the threat posed by the "rise of the Muslims", which he described as "one of the most difficult problems in current history."

"It?s a religion that many people follow and follow faithfully. And it leads to good lives," said Giuliani outside his car. "I have great respect for the religion and I also have a clear understanding that there is a small group of people who have misused it and turned it into a political ideology."

Americas Russia problem

Reviewing fifteen years of mistakes

AMERICA?s blunders risk making Russia into an enemy, argues Dimitri Simes of the Nixon Center in Washington, DC, in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs?and if so, watch out.

His main point is that America mistakenly treated Russia as a defeated enemy at the end of the Cold War. After initially cautious and sensible treatment of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, American administrations then lurched between stinginess, indulgence, suspicion and ill-judged bossiness in their dealings with both Boris Yeltsin, Russia?s former president, and then Vladimir Putin, its current leader.

When Mr. Snell tried to counsel the woman, his words were cut short when the man became furious, jumped the fence and, in the words of Mr. McTernan, ?leaped on the vehicle with Ed and catapulted him off of the vehicle and onto the ground.? Mr. Snell hit his back and head on the pavement and was knocked unconscious.

Shocked, Mr. McTernan shouted to the police: ?What are you doing?  That?s him!  That?s the assailant!? 

One cop replied: ?It is none of your business!? 

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. ? It began here with a scandal and, of course, a victory. Fifteen games ? and fifteen victories ? later, the New England Patriots exited Giants Stadium again Saturday night, this time not with a stain on their dynasty but with a new, unblemished addition to it.

Their 38-35 victory over the Giants completed a perfect regular season, the first time in 35 years such a pristine season has been accomplished. The Patriots (16-0) will now take their perfection into the playoffs, where they will try to equal the greatest team achievement in National Football League history: a perfect season, complete with a Super Bowl championship.

The initiative was revealed by 82-year-old Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican "exorcistinchief," to the online Catholic news service Petrus.

"Thanks be to God, we have a Pope who has decided to fight the Devil head-on," he said.

e  

That means that when they arrive on college campuses, a substantial majority of traditional aged freshmen will already be more than passive consumers of online content. Much (if not most) of what we do in creating online learning resources is predicated on putting up websites that push content at students?which means we are increasingly out of sync with what those students do online. Given that the Pew report provides evidence a steady increase in content creation by teens over the past three years, it is going to be incumbent on us to figure out ways to change our approach to resource creation to get back in sync with how our students see the Internet.

King

British soldiers with a machinegun

Reims was one of the most beautiful cities of France, until it was hit by bombardment after bombardment.

A Soldiers Lunch

Group of French soldiers in front of the entry of a shelter.

Senegalese French soldiers.

Soup

Trench

Destroyed

Senegalese soldiers washing their linen in troughs

French soldiers doing a wash in troughs

French soldiers doing a wash

Shirts and towels drying in the sun

French observator in a trench of the first line

Heure de Repos: Resting hour.
A group of Senegalese soldiers take a brake during a long march

Mystery Machine

Unknown Prototype

Women workers in the Farman military aircraft factory, 1917

Cemetery

Church in Ruins

German Prisoners-of-War look on how French soldiers do their punishment duty

Sandbags

Soldiers in front of a theatre tent

Pilots Tomb

Russian Soldiers in Reims

Apocalypse

A French 320mm siege gun

A soldiers urinoir - French for mens bathroom

Daily News

A

Anti-Air

Become a Knowledge Management Ninja with Google Reader

In this era of data smog, the knowledge worker who can act like an agile ninja by consuming vast quantities of information, synthesizing it and getting it in the hands of the right people at the right time is invaluable. For knowledge worker ninjas, RSS is your shuriken.

I have been using various RSS readers for nearly five years now - Ive tried them all. However, none matches the power of Google Reader. I have found that if you tap into all of its features, its the Holy Grail of Personal Knowledge Management.

So as 2007 winds down and thoughts turn to productivity and prosperity in the new year, I offer these tips to help. Share your own thoughts in the comments. (Some of these may work with RSS readers from Newsgator, Bloglines and others but they are written with Google in mind.)

Marblez

Mansoor was the military commander of Taliban forces in the strategic southern provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Uruzgan, and Zabul provinces. He took command of Taliban forces in May of this year after his brother Mullah Dadullah Ahkund, a popular but brutal and effective commander, was killed by British special forces in Helmand province.

Afghan and Coalition forces drove the Taliban from the former stronghold of Musa Qala. The Taliban fled without putting up much of a fight. Over 2,000 fighters were said to be in Musa Qala. It is unclear if the loss of Musa Qala and other Taliban failures in southern Afghanistan attributed to Mansoors dismissal.

How many times have you heard it? The mantra ?after 9/11 everything changed? has given absolution to all manner of sin.

We are understandably reluctant to believe the worst of our leaders, and this tends to make us negligent.

Reporting by the Rocky Mountain News and court documents and testimony on a case involving Qwest strongly suggest that in February 2001 Hayden saluted smartly when the Bush administration instructed NSA to suborn AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest to spy illegally on you, me, and other Americans.

Bear in mind that this would have had nothing to do with terrorism, which did not really appear on the new administration?s radar screen until a week before 9/11, despite the pleading of Clinton aides that the issue deserved extremely high priority.

So this until-recently-unknown pre-9/11 facet of the ?Terrorist Surveillance Program? was not related to Osama bin Laden or to whomever he and his associates might be speaking. It had to do with us.

Comparative Planetology: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson

Creationism versus Science

Welcome to the Creationism vs Science page! To your right, you will see an image of a 3.5 million year old skull excavated from Kenya in 1999. This one is named Kenyanthropus platyops, and it is being proposed as another possible distant ancestor of mankind. Its features are somewhat different than those of "Lucy", also known as Australopithecus afarensis (discovered in Ethiopia in 1974), with smaller teeth and a flatter face. It is also possible that it is related to the australopithecus family, and that its initial classification as a separate genus may have been premature.

Open Source Living beta

Welcome to Open Source Living, an archive of the Webs best Open Source software, applications and references for a zero-cost / top quality digital experience.

Web++ » web browsers, RSS readers, email Clients, operating systems

Graphics & Photo » photo editing, vector graphics, 3D modeling

Video » media players, video editing, screencasts, DVD ripping & burning

Audio » audio players, podcasting, recording, MP3 & audio tools

Documents » word & office suites, note taking, personal finance

Content Management » blogging, portals, forums, wiki, e-learning

File Transfer » peer to peer, IRC, chat clients , file sharing & hosting

Web Dev » MySQL & PHP, web dev references, Source code editors , flash

Entertainment » games, screensavers, stars and planetarium software

Miscellaneous » archiving, security, map tools, graph plotter, tracker

Categories

• Cities
• Beachs
• Nature
• Ski resorts
• Rail transport
• Traffic
• Animals
• Observatories
• Business
• Universities
• Interiors

Christmas 1916: an Australian Observation Post near Fleurbaix, on the Somme front

Australian soldier Leslie George Rub

The poem doesnt have literary pretensions, but it is universal in expressing the feelings and experiences of the common soldier who tries to survive on one of the most terrible battlefields in history.

The cheerful sarcasm in which Leslie dipped his pen is so Australian, that the poem could not have been written by a soldier of any other belligerent country. Only Australians ridiculed the war (and their commanding officers) in this way. That makes this Christmas poem quite unique and refreshing

We are here concerned about what these principles can tell us about musical thought and about thought itself.
Musical thought is a particular kind of thought. It has much in common with non-musical thought and also much that is specific. Non-musical thought involves verbal language and/or non-verbal processes; it is clearly possible to a considerable degree to think without language. Does it make sense to ask what is left of musical thought if one removes musical language from it? In both musical as in non-musical thought, the largest portions of its processes are not conscious, and so this question involves unconsciously operating generative grammars. Evidence for this grammar is found in musical microstructure.

One of the designers of the classic BBC Micro computer has been recognised in the New Year Honours list.

Steve Furber, of the University of Manchester, was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

He was honoured for services to computer science, which included work as a designer at the UK computer firm Acorn, the makers of the BBC machine.

Become a Knowledge Management Ninja with Google Reader [micro-persuasion] !

The Shell-Shattered Area

Infantry moving forward

The Front Line

Scene in the trenches

Laying a duckboard track

Just as it was

In an elephant iron dugout

Conducting a battle in a shell proof dugout

The camouflaged road

Limbers carrying up ammunition at sunset

The day before the battle: a dump of material accumulated in an advanced position

Infantry marching ahead

Shrapnel bursting amongst reconnoitering planes

The Battle

Battle

Death the Reaper

The dawn

Carrying in the wounded

The Battle

A Stretcher Case

Scene

Attending

Look

A

A Hun Pill-Box

Voor

A

A

Register

Sniping

54 Battery

Unload

Aus

Haul

The

A

The ruins

Being There (1979)

A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television. After a run in with a limousine, he ends up a guest of a woman (Eve) and her husband Ben, an influential but sickly businessman. Now called Chauncey Gardner, Chance becomes friend and confidante to Ben, and an unlikely political insider. Written by Scott Renshaw {as.idc@forsythe.stanford.edu}

Hack Attack: Getting good with Google Reader

Google Reader is one helluva feed reader, but unless youve spent a little time digging into the documentation, you probably arent taking full advantage of what it has to offer.

Today, Im going to show you the ins and outs of Googles powerful newsreader, with an emphasis on Readers powerful and time-saving keyboard shortcuts. To round things off, Ill finish up with some of my favorite Google Reader-related tweaks and downloads to get you up to speed with the best newsreader on the planet.

Respected scientist sees 6 billion perishing


Monday, October 29, 2007 10:45 AM EDT

The idea that men think about sex every seven seconds, like the claim that we only use 10 percent of our brains, is often repeated but rarely sourced

The stereotype about the sex-starved man and the disinterested woman may be more than just a cliche. As it turns out, the instant a woman enters a secure relationship, her sex drive begins to plummet. Four years in, a German study found, fewer than half of women wanted regular sex. And after 20 years, only 20 percent did

For as long as theres been such thing as a ruler, men have been putting wood to, um, wood and wondering how they measure up. "Theres nothing wrong with you. You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened," Hemingway reassured a panicking F. Scott Fizgerald. "It is basically not a question of the size in repose. It is the size that it becomes. It is also a question of angle.

Demonstration Crochet Videos

A woman was shopping at her local supermarket where she selected:

a half-gallon of 2% milk,
a carton of eggs,
a quart of orange juice,
a head of romaine lettuce,
a 2 lb. can of coffee and
a 1 lb. package of bacon.

As she was unloading her items on the conveyor belt to check out, a drunk standing behind her watched as she placed the items in front of the cashier. While the cashier was ringing up her purchases, the drunk calmly stated, ?You must be single.?

The woman was a bit startled by this proclamation, but she was intrigued by the derelict?s intuition, since she was indeed single. She looked at her six items on the belt and saw nothing particularly unusual about her selections that could have tipped off the drunk to her marital status. Curiosity getting the better of her, she said ?Well, you know what, you?re absolutely correct. But how on earth did you know that??

• Story Highlights
• Walter "Buck" Swords left Melina Salazar $50,000 and a 2000 Buick
  
• Salazar, who served Swords for almost seven years, said he was "kind of mean"
  
• Swords died in July but Salazar found out what he left her days before Christmas
• Next Article in U.S. »

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- For nearly seven years Melina Salazar did her best to put on a smile and tend to the every need of her most loyal and cantankerous customer.

She made sure his food was as hot as he wanted, even if it meant he burned his mouth. And she smiled through his demands and curses. The 89-year-old Walter "Buck" Swords obviously appreciated it, leaving the waitress $50,000 and a 2000 Buick when he died.

Police anger at Commons march ban

Relations between the Home Office and the force have fallen to a new low, with the Police Federation of England and Wales, the body that represents 124,000 rank-and-file officers, claiming the government is interfering behind the scenes over plans for the march to Parliament on 23 January.

The orders are renewed by Parliament each year and invoked by the Metropolitan Police if the force believes a protest will prevent MPs from going about their daily business. Critics of the orders claim they are a heavy-handed response designed to stifle peaceful protest.

Scientists call it the Naked Photo Test, and it works like this: say a photo turns up of you nakedly doing something that would shame you and your family for generations. Bestiality, perhaps. Ask yourself how many people in your life you would trust with that photo. If youre like the rest of us, you probably have at most two.

Even more depressing, studies show that about one out of four people have no one they can confide in.

The average number of close friends we say we have is dropping fast, down dramatically in just the last 20 years. Why?

An Islamic militant group said Saturday it had no link to Benazir Bhuttos killing, dismissing government claims that its leader orchestrated the assassination.

Bhuttos aides also said they doubted militant commander Baitullah Mehsud was behind the attack on the opposition leader and accused the government of a cover-up

GLENDALE - She had sparkling blue eyes, a captivating smile and a strong will to live despite her struggle with leukemia.

Nataline Sarkisyan, the 17-year-old Northridge girl whose death last week sparked a renewed call for health-care reform after she was twice denied a prescribed liver transplant, was buried Friday after a tear-streaked funeral.

"Though she is no longer with us physically, she is now resting peacefully in the presence of God," said Archbishop Mousbegh Mardirossian, western prelate for the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, who presided over her funeral.

"She is the foundation and hope for tomorrow."

Nataline died Thursday just hours after her insurance company, Philadelphia-based Cigna HealthCare, reversed two prior decisions to deny her a liver transplant despite the pleadings of doctors.

While gripping, it was not true ? and now the girl may lose her tickets after her mom acknowledged to contest organizers it was all a lie.

The sponsor of the contest was Club Libby Lu, a Chicago-based store that sells clothes, accessories and games intended for young girls.

The mother had told company officials that the girls father died April 17 in a roadside bombing in Iraq, company spokeswoman Robyn Caulfield said.

On October 8, 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati granted the governments request for a full-panel hearing in United States v. Warshak case. In their request, the government argued that they have a right to read stored copies of your email.

"Why does the U.S. Government want the right to information we write in our e-mail messages, a record of the websites we visit and our other internet activities?"

Everyone has seen the Free & Clear and Amazing Profits infomercials. But customers say that this real estate wealth building guru has questionable business practices.

You dont hear much about the nations "war on drugs" these days. Its a has-been, a glamorless geezer, a holdover from bygone days. Its glitz has been stolen by the "war on terror," which gets the news media hype and campaign trail rhetoric. Railing against recreational drug use and demanding that offenders be locked away is so 90s.

But the drug war proceeds, mostly away from news cameras and photo ops, still chewing up federal and state resources and casting criminal sanctions over entire neighborhoods. Some four or so decades into an intensive effort to stamp out recreational drug use, billions of dollars have been spent; thousands of criminals, many of them foreigners, have been enriched; and hundreds of thousands of Americans have been imprisoned. And the use of illegal substances continues unabated.

What if lawmakers forced us to bury 95 percent of our energy resources?

That is exactly what Washington does when it comes to safe, affordable and CO2-free nuclear energy. Indeed, 95 percent of the used fuel from America?s 104 power reactors, which provide about 20 percent of the nation?s electricity, could be recycled for future use.

Over the past four decades, America?s reactors have produced about 56,000 tons of used fuel. That ?waste? contains roughly enough energy to power every U.S. household for 12 years. And it?s just sitting there, piling up at power plant storage facilities. Talk about waste!

The sad thing is, the United States developed the technology to recapture that energy decades ago, then barred its commercial use in 1977. We have practiced a virtual moratorium ever since.

How Electric Cars Could Save the Grid

John Browne of BP.  Browne resigned this year partly because hisglobal warming strategy failed miserably. Under Browne?s leadership, BPlaunched its ?Beyond Petroleum? advertising campaign that embraced globalwarming alarmism as a way to

re-brand the company as a responsible company.

Over the past year, GE lobbyists had to fight hard to defeatoutright bans of incandescent bulbs and buy time to restructure its lightingbusiness that currently relies more on traditional bulbs. 

Indra K. Nooyi ofPepsiCo. Under Nooyi?s leadership, PepsiCo is leading the beverage industryin global warming political correctness. The company sponsored Al Gore?s LiveEarth concert to appear in sync with the ?environmental generation.?

James Owens ofCaterpillar Inc.  The constructionand mining equipment company?s global warming strategy is jeopardizing its futureearnings by working against its customers in the coal industry.

Leading surveillance societies in the EU and the World 2006

Santa Gives More to Rich Kids (Anti Santa Project)

The website is the home of different projects like the hilarious ?I love Arms? page or the ?Fear Channel?. You might find other funny and disturbing project (pieces of art?) on the site. The whole show is a creation of a certain Darren from Glasgow. You might also check out his band?s website at shitdisco.co.uk.

Fred: On Every Thing !

Ministry spokesman Abdul Karim Khalaf also outlined sharp falls in the numbers of assassinations, kidnappings and death squad murders.

He told a news conference that increased patrols along the borders with Saudi Arabia and Syria had slowed infiltration by militants and played a key role in Iraqs improved security situation.

"We have destroyed 75 percent of Al-Qaeda hide-outs, and we broke up major criminal networks that supported Al-Qaeda in Baghdad," he said.

"After eliminating safe houses in Anbar province, which used to be Al-Qaedas base, we moved into areas surrounding Baghdad and into Diyala province. Al-Qaeda headed north and we are pursuing them," he said.

This is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; theyre explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago.

The dates beside a word indicate the earliest year for which there is a surviving written record of that word (in English, unless otherwise indicated). This should be taken as approximate, especially before about 1700, since a word may have been used in conversation for hundreds of years before it turns up in a manuscript that has had the good fortune to survive the centuries.

Democrats rip Bushs pocket veto of military policy bill

KEY REASON: One aspect of law could have led to legal claims against Iraq

And then Friday, with no warning, a vacationing Bush announced he will veto a sweeping military policy bill because of an obscure provision that could expose Iraqs new government to billions of dollars in legal claims dating to Saddam Husseins rule.

The veto was an embarrassment for administration officials, who struggled to explain why they had not acted earlier to object to the provision, Section 1083 of a 1,300-page, $696 billion defense authorization bill.

The provision would expand the ability of Americans to seek financial compensation from countries that supported or sponsored terrorist acts, including Libya, Iran and Iraq under Hussein.

It also was an embarrassment for some in Congress, including Republican senators who co-sponsored the provision, such as John Cornyn of Texas and Ted Stevens of Alaska.

Definition: Plutocracy

Creeping Fascism: From Nazi Germany to Post 9/11 America

Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep

In what sounds like a dream for millions of tired coffee drinkers, Darpa-funded scientists might have found a drug that will eliminate sleepiness.

A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests. The discoverys first application will probably be in treatment of the severe sleep disorder narcolepsy.

From pagan deity to modern sex symbol - Snegurochka revealed

The pensioner is a veteran of seven treks to Nepal, as well as Tibet, Peru, Ethiopia, Mexico and Morocco.

Top tips for avoiding a dog attack

Tricia said its often because the animal feels frightened, so dogs are usually more scared of us than we are of them.

Sex sells but so does an attractive salesperson

"If a shirt had been touched by someone who is highly attractive and of the opposite gender, the shoppers evaluated the products higher and theyre willing to drop more money on it," said Jennifer Argo, a professor at the University of Alberta School of Business.

The researchers found that both male and female shoppers who saw the attractive model leave the changing room with the shirt were willing to try it on next.

"If the shopper was of average attractiveness, the participant evaluated the shirt negatively. But if it was the opposite gender and they were highly attractive, the participants were willing to pay more," Argo explained in a statement.

"The results show that its worth having highly attractive people work there. Or if you cant, at least have the staff dress well and be well-groomed and maximize their potential."

the Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger claimed that:

"There is no friendship between men that has not an element of sexuality in it, however little accentuated it may be in the nature of the friendship, and however painful the idea of the sexual element would be. But it is enough to remember that there can be no friendship unless there has been some attraction to draw the men together. Much of the affection, protection, and nepotism between men is due to the presence of unsuspected sexual compatibility." (Sex and Character, 1903)

WEST DES MOINES--They came to hear Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee speak, but first the crowd of hundreds had to sit through a soft-sell pitch on the wonders of multi-level marketing.

For half an hour, two businessmen paced the stage where Huckabee would soon stump. They never said the name of the company during their talks, but afterward some members of the crowd shared with others the good news of a company called Quixtar Inc.

Quixtar is a sibling company of multi-level marketing giant Amway ? and, according to Huckabees public schedule, the host of the event.

"We found out later from a friend it was some kind of Internet marketing thing," said Bill Evanich, an avid Huckabee fan who attended the evening event late last week. "I thought it was political, and that wed get to ask questions."

GOP, Dissatisfied With Its Candidates, Recruits ?Reagan Impersonator?

Or here are our free, simple, skwerly screen savers for your pc. No ads, no links, no spyware. Just nutcrunchers (see pics below; designed for 800x600 or 1024x768 screen resolution). Download and run the file to install (uninstaller included).

The Georgia Department of Agriculture is quarantining PetSmart stores in the state and a Superpetz store in Martinez due to psittacosis, a bird disease that can be transferred to humans.

Psittacosis is a bacterial disease that primarily affects parrots, parakeets and other members of the parrot family. It is treatable but can be fatal to the birds. Only in rare cases does it infect poultry. The disease produces flu-like symptoms in humans, but it does not respond to treatments for the flu. The disease is especially dangerous to the young, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems, such as persons with chronic disease, AIDS or HIV infection or those taking chemotherapy for cancer.

"We have had two confirmed cases of psittacosis at PetSmart stores in Hiram and Woodstock. There have also been confirmed cases at the dealer, Preferred Birds of Milton, Florida, that supplied birds to all the stores we are quarantining," said Commissioner Tommy Irvin.

In a special edition on "Best Inventions 2006," Time magazine praises the decision by Shanghai-based Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies "to design and market the H-racer, a 6-inch-long toy car that does what Detroit still cant. It runs on hydrogen extracted from plain tap water, using the solar-powered hydrogen station."

Hydrogen vehicles are not mere toys. More than 500 are on the road today. A BMW prototype with a hydrogen internal-combustion engine attained a top speed of 186 miles an hour. Mazda, Ford, Honda and GM are developing a variety of hydrogen-powered engines. Perhaps most exciting, Honda is now powering zero-emission vehicles with hydrogen derived from tap water in small stationary units that drivers can keep in their garages.

These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed

At the Heart of Attraction Lies Confusion: Choice Blindness