A former Wall Street broker won a $7.25 million civil suit after a botched laser eye surgery that he says left his vision permanently damaged.

The award, handed down by a jury in Manhattan Supreme Court, is believed to be the biggest so far in cases involving LASIK surgery.

Mark Schiffer, a 32-year-old Yale graduate, said the shoddy care he got from Dr. Mark Speaker and the TLC Laser Eye Center in October 2000 forced him to ditch his Wall Street career and take a job with his dad's security firm, according to his lawyer, Todd Krouner.

Mark Schiffer, WG’01, has been named chief financial officer of Safe Banking Systems. Prior to joining SBS, Schiffer worked for Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:26 PM   1 comments

Now if I can just find how to CODE notes instead of having to "record."

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:41 PM   1 comments

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman said Thursday that he is against an Omaha Public Schools plan to take over schools in the metro area.

OPS wants to annex 21 Millard schools and four in Ralston, which are within Omaha city limits. Eventually, Elkhorn Public Schools also would be part of OPS under the plan. The OPS School Board calls it a plan of one city, one district and said the move would level the playing field.

Four school districts have banded together to fight the plan, and Douglas County officials have told OPS that they have no authority to redraw borders or reassign taxes.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:45 AM   0 comments

Before voting against the Medicaid and adoption-subsidy cuts, I urged my fellow legislators to remember that we must accept responsibility for what happens to Missourians who lose health coverage and necessary family supports.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:00 PM   1 comments

In April, Hilton issued a terse statement saying it was "no big secret that Nicole and I are no longer friends. Nicole knows what she did, and that's all I'm ever going to say about it."

- posted by Brian J. @ 1:58 PM   0 comments

The answer to his Walgreens question is "economic development," something that seems much needed in an area with boarded-up Polish flats being stripped of their siding, wandering transients and a fair trade in drugs and prostitution.

"Just because something is old doesn't mean it is historic," said Ald. Bob Donovan, who represents the 8th District, within which the tavern sits, and who made an unusual parliamentary maneuver to get the development the City Hall green light earlier this year after its chances for passing had stalled over the previous two.

Donovan said he saw in the $5 million development a chance for the neighborhood to "get a shot in the arm."

"What the neighborhood is getting is an investment in their community," said Michael Polzin, a New Berlin native and spokesman for the suburban-Chicago-based chain, which has 31 stores in Milwaukee proper. He's never been to the National Liquor Bar.

- posted by Brian J. @ 1:47 PM   0 comments

The case started when the boy was at his grandmother's home and went next door to play video games with the teens.

Police said the teens stopped playing the games and started a real-life drama with real weapons.

- posted by Brian J. @ 1:29 PM   0 comments

A newfound object in our solar system's outskirts may be larger than any known world after Pluto, scientists said today.

It also has a moon.

- posted by Brian J. @ 1:25 PM   0 comments

DID YOU KNOW?

Some people are green.
Look in mirror. Are you green? No?
Then kill all green people.

TIP! Green people flammable!

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:20 AM   0 comments

Police apparently using stun grenades raided a west London home Friday seeking suspects in the failed July 21 bombings targeting the capital's transit system, and a British television network reported one arrest.

Police snipers participated in a raid in the Notting Hill section of London, where suspects in the failed July 21 bombings were thought to be hiding.

The raid took place near Portobello Road in the chic Notting Hill neighborhood famous for its weekend street market.

Metropolitan Police confirmed that "an armed operation is currently in progress" but said it was in the "very early stages."

Sky News reported two small explosions in the area, where helicopters buzzed overhead and police cordoned off a number of streets, and said one person had been arrested.

• An increased pace of suicide bombings? Check.
  
  
• Increasing violence? Check.
  
  
• Armed operations leading to hunt the insurgents? Check.
  
  
• Squabbling political rivals with incendiary rhetoric? Check.
  
  
• Rationing/shortages that impair the quality of life of citizens? Check. In Baghdad, it's water or electricity; in London, it's health care.
  
  

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:29 AM   1 comments

Triple numbers are popular Pick 3 bets, with 4-4-4 ranked as the top combination and 0-0-0 coming in 11th, Gonder said.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:36 AM   0 comments

The NHL will return to the ice with the busiest night in the league’s 88-year history.

Not wanting fans to have to wait one extra day to see their teams, the NHL has scheduled 15 games — including all 30 clubs — on opening night Oct. 5.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:22 AM   0 comments

East-West Gateway Council of Governments put the final funding in place today for the overhaul of Interstate 64 (Highway 40) between Sarah Street in St. Louis to Spoede Road in St. Louis County.

The regional planning agency approved $329 million in federal money for rebuilding the highway. At earliest, construction would start in early 2007. The Highway 40 work was among more than 175 other construction projects worth $1.1 billion that East-West Gateway approved. The money will be spent through 2009.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:39 PM   0 comments

Barbara Huberman wants fresh sheets on her hotel bed every night.

She's annoyed that a growing number of lodgings are now changing them less often. "It's ridiculous," says the executive for a Washington-based charitable organization who stays up to 100 nights each year in a hotel. "I have always looked forward to that feel of clean pressed sheets every night. At $200-plus a night, I think I deserve this."

Advocates for Youth is dedicated to creating programs and advocating for policies that help young people make informed and responsible decisions about their reproductive and sexual health. Advocates provides information, training, and strategic assistance to youth-serving organizations, policy makers, youth activists, and the media in the United States and the developing world.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:19 AM   2 comments

Investigators in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal have discovered a network of overseas bank accounts operated by Benon Sevan, the former head of the United Nations programme, who is the subject of a criminal inquiry by New York prosecutors.

Officials from investigative agencies, including the UN's Volcker inquiry, say that Mr Sevan has accounts in his native Cyprus, Turkey and Switzerland.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:16 AM   0 comments

You probably read the stories or saw the footage of little John Roberts acting up as President Bush introduced John's daddy, Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. He wiggled and danced around, and generally acted like any 4-year-old would in such a formal situation. It was the most hilarious display of mischief by a politician's son since Rudy Giuliani's kid blew kisses to the crowd and pretended to take the oath of office when his father was sworn in as mayor of New York City.

But whose idea was it to dress the kid like a summertime version of Little Lord Fauntleroy? An Easter Egg-colored suit with short pants, white socks and saddle shoes? Was that a tribute to John-John circa 1962? That kid is going to be teased on a lot of playgrounds, even private school playgrounds, if he's dressed like that in the future.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:36 PM   0 comments

Some Republican legislators want to charge unwed fathers thousands of dollars for hospital birth costs incurred by low-income mothers on Medicaid.

The twin goals: making fathers shoulder more responsibility and reducing taxpayers' costs.

"I don't intend for anything to be punitive at all for mom and baby," Senate Majority Leader Charlie Shields said at a recent meeting of the Missouri Medicaid Reform Commission, which he co-chairs.

"But the last time I checked, it takes two people to make a baby. And there is some responsibility, not just for child support, but for the cost of bringing that child successfully into the world," said Shields, R-St. Joseph.

Critics say mother and baby would suffer under Shields' proposal because some women would give up Medicaid and forgo prenatal care rather than cooperate in efforts to bill the father for hospital costs.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:03 AM   0 comments

It might sound preposterous, like astrology, to suggest that galactic events help determine when North America is or isn't buried under immense sheets of ice taller than skyscrapers. But new research suggests the coming and going of major ice ages might result partly from our solar system's passage through immense, snakelike clouds of exploding stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Resembling the curved contrails of a whirling Fourth of July pinwheel, the Milky Way's spiral arms are clouds of stars rich in supernovas, or exploding stars. Supernovas emit showers of charged particles called cosmic rays.

Theorists have proposed that when our solar system passes through a spiral arm, the cosmic rays fall to Earth and knock electrons off atoms in the atmosphere, making them electrically charged, or ionized. Since opposite electrical charges attract each other, the positively charged ionized particles attract the negatively charged portion of water vapor, thus forming large droplets in the form of low-lying clouds.

In turn, the clouds cool the climate and trigger an ice age -- or so theorists suggest.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:00 AM   0 comments

• Companies were using Windows NT, and home users were buying Packard Bells pre-installed with the new Windows 98. First Edition.
  
  
• Ken Starr was preparing a report that would lead to impeachment of President Clinton.
  
  
• Bill Clinton had not given the televised speech saying he might have inappropriate contact with an intern.
  
  
• NATO was threatening air strikes against Serbia for its continuing slaughter of Albanians.
  
  
• NASDAQ was almost to 2000, less than half of its peak in the dot-com bubble.
  
  
• Matthew Shepherd was an anonymous student in Wyoming.
  
  
• The Truman Show really creeped me out, so I saw it three times in theatres.
  
  
• I was four months into my first job in IT, and four months out of my last blue collar position. I had just moved out of my mother's basement, rock on!, and was about five months ahead of my first IT layoff.
  
  
• I was a mere days away from proposing to my girlfriend, whom I had tricked into moving to St. Louis from Columbia by pretending I was pregnant.
  
  
• John Grisham had dominated the bestseller lists.
  
  
• When you said "Potter," people thought of Sherman T., but that was about to change.
  
  
• More people still used Netscape Navigator than Internet Explorer.
  
  
• Feminism was in an uproar when Ally MacBeal appeared on Time as an icon of feminism.
  
  

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:22 PM   0 comments

• With Bush's help, GE courts Indian PM, nuke sector:
  
  
  Just over an hour after the White House's surprise pledge to help India develop its civilian nuclear power sector, the head of General Electric, the American company that could benefit most from the policy change, sat down for a celebratory dinner.
  
  The host was President Bush; a few feet away was India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and his top aides. GE Chief Executive Jeff Immelt, a contributor to Bush's presidential campaigns, had a coveted seat at the president's table.
  
  Bush's announcement on nuclear trade with India -- followed by a formal dinner in the State dining room -- was not just a victory for Singh. For GE, the only U.S.-owned company still in the nuclear business, it marked a possible turning point in a years-long push to re-enter the Indian nuclear power market, which it was forced to leave in 1974 when India conducted its first nuclear test.
  
  
  I'm not sure how this conspiracy fits into the whole Bush Works For Big Oil thing, but if our country's nuclear industry has fallen to only a single company continuing to work on nuclear industry, I blame the same groups who banged the trash can lids of China syndrome and called them symbols in the 1980s. They drove the other corporate entities out of nuclear energy. If freaking PETA made nuclear power plants, green and with no harm to animals, it would benefit them, too, but PETA just plays dress up and engages in useless theatrics. So who do you think would benefit from a compact designed to get real work done? Oh, yeah, companies that do real work.
  
  
• LAPD Recruits Computer to Stop Rogue Cops:
  
  
  Dogged by scandal, the Los Angeles Police Department is looking beyond human judgment to technology to identify bad cops.
  
  This month, the agency began using a $35 million computer system that tracks complaints and other telling data about officers - then alerts top supervisors to possible signs of misconduct.
  
  
  Let's watch libertarians and civil rights zealots experience the Kirk-driven conundrum in this one. One on hand, it's a potentially-problematic invasion of privacy, but on the other hand, it's pigs, man!
  
  Personally, I am ambivalent on this one. It's an employer tracking employee behaviour. LAPD cops, if you have a problem, you have a right to become SFPD or security guards. I don't think that it's inappropriate to track efficiency and productivity or other performance on the job, even for police. However, I would like to see the program extended to the other, more dead, weight of the government. Track the behavior, complaints, and productivity of every state employee, and bring down the wrath of firing and embarrassment upon anyone who's not carrying their share of the taxpayer-funded load.
  
  
• Pressure on U.S. to Use More Surveillance:
  Pressure is building for greater use of video cameras to keep watch over the nation's cities - particularly in transportation systems and other spots vulnerable to terrorism - after the bombings in London.
  
  The calls have come over the last few weeks as British investigators released surveillance footage of the bombers in the deadly July 7 attacks and then put out frames of suspects in Thursday's failed attacks.
  
  "I do not think that cameras are the big mortal threat to civil liberties that people are painting them to be," Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony A. Williams said Friday.
  
  
  Civil liberties matter less than actual safety, dear Mayor-Who-Hasn't-Been-Caught-Smoking-Crack-Yet. Note that the cameras in the July 7 blasts, which killed a pile of people, did nothing to stop the killing. They only provided handy images with which to assign blame.
  
  But that's what contemporary government is all about, ainna? Letting things happen, and then assigning blame. Assuming one survives to spectate the whole thing, of course.
  
  
• Spoof of Bush Wins Faux Faulkner Contest:
  A scathing parody that likens President Bush to the "idiot" in William Faulkner's novel "The Sound and the Fury" has won this year's Faulkner write-alike contest - and touched off a literary spat.
  
  Organizers of the Faux Faulkner competition are accusing Hemispheres, the United Airlines magazine that has sponsored the contest for six years, of playing politics by not putting Sam Apple's "The Administration and the Fury" in its print edition - only on its Web site.
  
  "One of the things they asked was that we didn't have profanity or any obvious sexual content. We watch for that. But anything else, like a political subject, was funny, it was parody. ... We felt that that shouldn't be censored," said Larry Wells, who organizes the contest with his wife, Dean Faulkner Wells, Faulkner's niece.
  
  
  I agree. Let's prevent censorship. Allow me to stand in front of the jack-booted Bureau of Proper Bush Worship thugs preventing Hemispheres from printing its views. But pardon me if I recognize that Hemispheres understands that blatantly anti-Bush twaddle could offend over 50% of its clientele and decides not to print it, or that Faulknerian anti-Bush twaddle appeals to less than 10% of its clientele who both hate Bush and have actually made it through The Sound and The Fury.
  
  Because, brother, the fact that you can villify Bush and write like William Faulkner might make you a genius in literary circles, but that doesn't make you salable. As you probably already know.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:18 PM   0 comments

But investigators have a growing list of people who did not kill Angela Lee.

That list has been compiled with the help of DNA evidence, found at the scene, that has been compared with voluntary DNA submissions from "people of interest," said Mike Sheeley, a master sergeant with the Illinois State Police.

About 30 people have been cleared after giving DNA samples at the request of authorities, he said.

It's one example of how the science of DNA is helping to solve crimes that aren't easily solved - including crimes in a village surrounded by corn fields.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:47 PM   0 comments

• I just read a book based on a movie starring Madonna, and this book shares the title with one of her early hits.
  
  
• The Robert B. Parker endorsement on the front cover: "Gerry Boyle is the genuine article."

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:32 PM   0 comments

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to volatile Lebanon on Friday to encourage a new democratic government outside Syrian control and better relations between the two Mideast countries.

Hours after Rice left the city, witnesses said an explosion rocked a busy street of restaurants and bars in a Christian neighborhood of Beirut.

"We would like to see the day when there are good neighborly relations between Syria and Lebanon based on mutual respect and equality," Rice said at a joint news conference with Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Foud Saniora earlier in the day.

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:23 PM   0 comments

Plainclothes police chased a man in a thick coat through a subway station, wrestled him to the floor of a train car and shot him to death in front of stunned commuters Friday, witnesses said. Police said the shooting was "directly linked" to the investigations of the bomb attacks on London's transit system.

At Stockwell Station, armed officers opened fire on the suspect after he hurdled a ticket barrier and raced along a platform.

Police screamed at passengers to evacuate and are thought to have shot the suspect as he stumbled on to a train.

Alarmed onlookers said they saw up to 10 plain-clothed officers chasing an Asian-looking man before opening fire.

Metropolitan Police chief Sir Ian Blair said the shooting was "directly linked" to ongoing anti-terrorist invetigations in the capital.

He said the man had failed to comply with instructions from police before he was shot dead.

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:09 PM   0 comments

The Village Board has ordered a blue Big Bird sculpture down from its nest atop a chimney of a historical home, where neighbors want it removed.



Trustees voted unanimously this week to deny the special use permit application of artist Al Emmons, who with his family created the chimney ornamentation through their company, Creative Construction of Wisconsin Inc., for the home at 5595-97 Bluebird Court.

"It's changed our way of life. It has infringed on our privacy. It has caused a lot of heartache on the street," said Ardith Weitkunat, a Bluebird Court resident. "This is totally inappropriate for the top of a house."

"That's what upset me the most. He wasn't given permission to do this," he [another neighbor] said.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:55 AM   0 comments

• Why is it that when I am not a subscriber, 12 issues of your magazine cost $10, but when I am a renewing "preferred customer," 12 issues of your magazine cost $36?
  
  
• Doesn't it occur to you that this might explain why I don't freaking renew?

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:12 PM   0 comments

BACK IN THE EARLY 1980s, comedian Richard Pryor used to tell a story about a woman, so in love with her man, she tolerates his obvious indiscretions. Once, after catching her beloved in bed with another woman, Pryor told how the man persuaded the woman he did nothing wrong.

"Who you gonna believe — me or your lying eyes?" the man asked.

While listening to the comedy routine recently, I finally figured out why President George W. Bush has managed to deflect scrutiny and backlash for his actions. Most Americans, it seems, look upon Bush like starry-eyed lovers. No matter what he's done or what's happened on his watch, most refuse to see their "man's" reckless behavior for what it is.

• Forget the flimflam, sleight-of-hand, word manipulation Bush used to justify invading Iraq — a country he claimed possessed a cache of nuclear and chemical weapons. It wasn’t about WMDs, he later told us with a straight face. We’re fighting for more democratic, nobler causes.
  
  Wow, Sylvester Brown got dinged for making that very same claim before. See also Instapundit posts here and here. Perhaps like me, Mr. Brown just wants the attention from Instapundit and the readership he brings.
  
  
• And what about those “secret memos” that were all the buzz in Europe?
  
  That's the discredited Downing Street Memo.
  
  
• A news story about a politician who vengefully jeopardized the life of a government agent — now that’s juicy stuff. Surely such a story, even if remotely true, would signal the end of any political career.
  
  Gunning for Rove with BBs. Yawn.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:46 PM   1 comments

Subway riders may face random police checks of their bags under a security measure being considered in the nation's capital, the latest city to look for ways to deter terrorism on rail systems.

No decision has been made on the idea for the city's 106-mile Metrorail system, and the logistics would be difficult. But “it would be another tool in our security toolbox,” says Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein.

• If the random searches occur in crowded stations or, heaven forfend, crowded trains, what's the difference of detonating the backpack on schedule or when the Metro cop says, "Hey, you!"? Not much to a suicide bomber.
  
  
• Fine, you say, search all backpacks before people get into the system. Capital idea! As in waste of capital except for the new TSA hires for screening backpacks who will draw new salaries and government benefits.
  
  But when you look at an airport, a subway, or other mass transit system, you have two locations where passengers are grouped and vulnerable: In the little metal tubes, and in the queues. Adding a new queue checkpoint where everyone regardless of train, plane, or bus has to crowd together will give terrorists and malcontents a fatter opportunity to wreak their havoc and up their body counts with a bomb.
  
  
• Searching backpacks won't stop bombers wearing bomb belts. Or bomb shoes. Or whatever other nefarious creativities will arise to subvert the check and balance mechanisms put in place to deal with a very specific threat.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:13 AM   2 comments

The state's pursuit of more than $1 million in back taxes and penalties from online cigarette customers could hint at the Department of Revenue's plans to go after taxes on computers, books and other goods bought over the Internet, tax attorneys and analysts said Wednesday.

Department of Revenue officials disputed that speculation, saying they would pursue only online cigarette customers.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:55 AM   0 comments

The St. Louis area added thousands more "bad" jobs than it did higher-paying "good" ones from 1980 to 2000, according to a report released by the Federal Reserve this week.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:42 AM   0 comments

t's ironic that political genius Karl Rove - and perhaps others - could end up in prison for exposing the identity of an undercover CIA agent. Ironic, because their essential mistake in doing so was one of identity: their own.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:38 AM   0 comments

• If Madonna had been born 20 years later, she would have been one of the first stars with a sex tape accidentally leaked to the Internet.
  
  
• I find it unintentionally amusing when I read books where characters in their mid twenties think they're old. You don't really get old until your middle thirties, anyone in his or her middle thirties will tell you.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:17 PM   0 comments

eBay said Monday that sellers could no longer accept PayPal payments from buyers without accepting credit card transactions, thereby avoiding PayPal fees. eBay acquired PayPal in 2002.

Sellers' practice of restricting PayPal payment methods "was creating a bad buyer experience," said PayPal spokeswoman Amanda Pires. "It would be like walking into the grocery store and filling up your cart, getting to the check stand with your credit card and being told sorry, even after you saw the credit card logo outside the store."

Under PayPal rules, sellers can accept payment through bank transfers or PayPal balances for free. But sellers in the United States who accept credit card payments are charged between 1.9 percent and 2.9 percent of the value of the transaction, based on volume.

Pires sought to quell concerns that eBay was tightening the restrictions merely to boost PayPal's fee collections.

"We got a lot of community feedback, which is why we're changing this," Pires said. "And it was a very small percentage of sellers who were doing this."

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:36 AM   0 comments

One of the most important areas for the Senate to explore is Judge Roberts's views on federalism - the issue of how much power the federal government should have. The far right is on a drive to resurrect ancient, and discredited, states' rights theories. If extremists take control of the Supreme Court, we will end up with an America in which the federal government is powerless to protect against air pollution, unsafe working conditions and child labor. There are reasons to be concerned about Judge Roberts on this score. He dissented in an Endangered Species Act case in a way that suggested he might hold an array of environmental laws, and other important federal protections, to be unconstitutional.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:09 AM   0 comments

Nearly 25,000 civilians have been killed since the start of the Iraq war, according to a group that tracks the civilian death toll from the conflict.

The Iraq Body Count -- a London-based group comprising academics and human rights and anti-war activists -- said on Tuesday that 24,865 civilians had died between March 20, 2003 and March 19, 2005. [Emphasis mine]

"Our data has been extracted from a comprehensive analysis of over 10,000 press and media reports published since March 2003. Our accounting is not complete: only an in-depth, on-the-ground census could come close to achieving that," the group said.

"But if journalism is the first draft of history, then this dossier may claim to be an early historical analysis of the military intervention's known human costs."

The Iraqi government disputed some of the finding of the report.

"We welcome the attention given by this report to Iraqi victims of violence but we consider that it is mistaken in claiming that the plague of terrorism has killed fewer Iraqis than the multinational forces," said the prime minister's office, citing recent terror strikes, including the Musayyib bombing that killed nearly 100 people on Saturday.

"The international forces try to avoid civilian casualties, whereas the terrorists target civilians and try to kill as many of them as they can."

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:52 PM   0 comments

WHERE do you house 10,000 books? In an apartment with plenty of shelf space, of course.

So that's what Thomas and Katherine Cole needed when they moved to New York.

Mr. Cole, 71, who retired five years ago as a classics professor at Yale University, likes working from home, which means having on hand the thousands of reference works he might need. (He is writing a literary study of Ovid.)

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:56 AM   0 comments

Researchers at the National Corn-To-Ethanol Research Center at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville said there are several federal studies that cite the opposite and said the recent study is harming their ability to reduce the United States' dependence on foreign oil.

"It discourages me," said Martha Schlicher, director of the research center. "People tend to remember negative news instead of becoming educated in what may not be as interesting. I worry that in a time so critical for energy security and the environment that this detracts from getting accurate information to consumers."

At a time when businesses, state officials and farmers are investing millions of dollars in ethanol research, researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and the University of California at Berkeley found it takes 29 percent more energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount stored in the resulting fuel. [Emphasis mine]

Twenty-First Century Scientific Method

1. Observe some aspect of the universe.
   
   
2. Determine that the aspect of the universe impacts some large corporation, public policy initiative, or both.
   
   
3. Write grant proposals and get funding for research into the aspect of the universe.
   
   
4. Organize and attend conferences to confabulate with others who are thinking about the aspect of the universe, or perhaps just related fields, or perhaps unrelated fields--after all, the universe is holistically interrelated.
   
   
5. When funding is about to run out, invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis. You can make it all up if you want; it only needs to be believeable enough to warrant more funding.
   
   
6. Use the hypothesis to make predictions and as progress report or new grant proposal fodder.
   
   
7. Receive more funding.
   
   
8. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and conclude you need more funding to conduct further research.
   
   
9. Repeat steps 6 through 8 until retirement age.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:29 AM   0 comments

Adult entertainment businesses plan to ask a judge to block a new law that would prohibit lap dances and full nudity in Missouri strip clubs.

The Missouri chapter of Adult Club Executives plans to seek an injunction next week against the law, scheduled to take effect Aug. 28, said Kansas City attorney Richard Bryant, who represents the group.

The legislation, signed Wednesday by Gov. Matt Blunt, would prohibit customers and employees younger than 21 at strip clubs. It also would ban nudity and require seminude employees to remain at least 10 feet away from customers and behind a 2-foot-high railing. The bill would prohibit employees from touching customers.

For revelers in Kansas City's downtown entertainment district, the party won't have to end at the door.

A law signed by Gov. Matt Blunt will allow patrons to stroll in and out of restaurants and bars without dumping their alcoholic beverages. Kansas City officials are reworking the city's alcohol ordinance to make it conform with the state's law.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:16 AM   3 comments

But O'Fallon sergeant Tom Otten is far from satisfied by the punishment. "What does a suspension do? It does nothing. That shows a horrible lack of character and moral judgment"[sic]

If the deejays aren't fired, Otten vows to write and call his fellow officers to have them contact the KATZ advertisers, and urge them to remove their ads.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:41 AM   0 comments

• 60% meetings
  of the cabinet and president or the president and someone or someone and staff. Includes 4 pages spent on a "tension-breaking" anecdote about flatulence and its counter tension-breaking 3-page story of misunderstaken lesbianism. The characters loved these particular stories, breaking up in laughter I, the reader, didn't share. Most of the rest of these meetings involve various cabinet members debating the stakes of the plot.
  
  
• 12% character sketches
  thrown in simply because the author went through the trouble of creating them. The life story of the minor character of the Chief of Staff? Hey, we've got the material, throw it in!
  
  
• 4% action,
  presented in riveting cut scenes of short length and of pointless peril. Whoa, the helicopter of SEALs almost got shot down by an Iraqi MiG! That was close. Considering that they don't do a fallujin thing in the book, it's wasted space.
  
  
• 8% miscellaneous exposition.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:04 PM   0 comments

Presidential Theme

• Zachary, Taylor
• John, Adam
• Rutherford, Hayes
• Chester, Arthur
• James, Monroe
• James, Garfield
• John, Tyler
• James, Madison
• Jimmy, Carter
• Franklin, Pierce

• William, Henry, Harrison

Musical Theme

• Paula, Abdul
• Bryan, Adam
• Rick, Astley
• Lindsey, Buckingham
• Garth, Brooke
• Mariah, Carey
• Alice, Cooper
• Bob, Dylan
• Celine, Dion
• Missy, Elliot
• Aretha, Franklin
• Radney, Foster
• Peter, Gabriel
• Lou, Graham
• Billy, Joel

• Billy, Ray, Cyrus
• Terence, Trent, Darby

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:02 PM   0 comments

He said he has received thousands of dollars in donations, as well as some ominous death threats. One warning came in a handwritten letter mailed to Weisburd's house. Another letter on a Web site declared that he should be beheaded and it listed his address. For his protection, Weisburd keeps a loaded 38mm pistol in the house.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:57 PM   0 comments

This is no frivolous enterprise. There are plenty of legitimate, practical business reasons why the Cards are mulling a change. Yet in this parochial old baseball town that clings to routine like a pit bull gnawing on a bone, change is a strange and scary place. That is a quirky little characteristic of the Midwest, where the insular mood is to keep things just the way they always are.

Tradition, the bedrock loyalists call it. Inflexibility, the mystified outsiders mock it.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:56 PM   0 comments

As a deterrent, at least, they were a failure. Civil libertarians fear these cameras, with some reason (my guess is that they'll be used more to catch parking scofflaws and to dig up dirt on political opponents than to reduce crime or terrorism) but the real story is their ineffectiveness. Every cop sitting in a control room, eating doughnuts and watching monitors, could be out on the street, looking at things with his or her own eyes and in a position to do something about what he or she sees. Nonetheless, the response to the London bombings will probably include a call for more, not fewer, cameras.

That's a mistake. As Jeffrey Rosen wrote in a superb essay published just after 9/11 (but sadly no longer available online), London's "ring of steel" camera network never caught a terrorist...

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:49 AM   5 comments

A University of Alberta professor I know sent me a lengthy article he's trying to get published, entitled: "Let's get while the getting's good."

In it, Leon Craig, professor emeritus of political science, lays out a case for Alberta to declare unilateral independence. And he lays it out well.

Craig makes no bones about it.

Alberta, he says, should go it alone.

Almost overnight, we would become one of the most prosperous nations in the world.

But -- and this is his key point -- the main reason to secede is not because Albertans would have more money. Not that there's anything wrong with money.

More importantly, we would create a country that reflects our own political and social beliefs, values and traditions, and our understanding of the common good.

Canada, says Craig, has been so badly governed since the Trudeau era, it has doomed itself to a Third World, banana republic fate.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:04 PM   0 comments

Aristophanes is not your name
I know what you're up to just the same

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:21 PM   0 comments

• Matt Blunt Balances Budget On Backs of Hobbyist Farmers
  
  
• Matt Blunt: Liar or Dupe?

• He's conservativish.
  
  
• He's making all the right people mad by cutting numerous state programs to fit the budget.
  
  
• Because a Generation X president would bypass all the things the Boomers still can do to us.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:36 PM   0 comments

Click for full size

Good with children, favorite toy is a blanket and

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:49 PM   2 comments

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich put the Pentagon on formal notice Monday that he will not approve its proposed move of F-16 fighter aircraft from the 183rd Fighter Wing in Springfield to Indiana.

In a letter sent to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the governor argued that under federal law if he does not consent to the realignment, the change can not legally be made.

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:14 PM   20 comments

City Councilman Barry Greenberg was the only city official who attended the meeting. Good for him. On the other hand, it was awkward to see the relationship the people have with the councilman. They had to restrain their anger. He has the power to ruin them. He will be voting for or against the development plans.

I have a duty to look at these plans, he said solemnly.

Why? That's what I wondered. Since when do local officials have the responsibility to decide whether to use eminent domain to let developers take away homes and businesses? By the way, ideologically, this seems to be an equal opportunity crime. It was the liberal wing of the U.S. Supreme Court that recently declared local governments have that right, but the mayor of Maplewood is a former radio executive who yanked the Dixie Chicks off his station when they criticized George W. Bush. It's as if both sides of the political spectrum have come together to agree on one thing: Money rules.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:30 AM   1 comments

Kevin Johnson, the suspect sought in the shooting death of a Kirkwood police sergeant, was arrested without incident in north St. Louis County on Friday afternoon, police said.

Johnson, 19, was the subject of an intense manhunt after Tuesday's shooting of police Sgt. William McEntee. McEntee was responding to a call in Kirkwood's Meacham Park neighborhood just before 8 p.m. when he was shot several times.

Johnson surrendered at the Ventura Village Apartments on Jacobi Drive and Nemnich Road, police said.

Northwoods Police Chief Greg Moore said Friday night a detective in his department received a call from one of Johnson's family members just after 5 p.m. Friday.

Moore said Johnson "wanted to turn himself in without any fanfare and without being harmed."

The detective who received the call and another officer drove to pick up the family member, then headed to Ventura Village Apartments, Moore said.

When they arrived, the relative directed them to an apartment near the back of the complex. Moore said another relative greeted them at the door.

Johnson was sitting on a couch in the apartment with his hands in front of him, Moore said.

Moore described Johnson's demeanor as "humble and cooperative" as he was taken into custody.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:11 PM   0 comments

In a case that tobacco law specialists say is one of the first of its kind in the nation, a Boston Housing Court jury ruled that a South Boston couple could be evicted from their rented water-view loft for heavy smoking, even though smoking was allowed in their lease.

The landlord who rented the Sleeper Street unit to Erin Carey and Ted Baar ordered them out within a week last November, after neighbors complained of the smoke odors filtering into their apartments.

Carey and Baar, who each smoke about a pack a day and run an information technology sales business out of the one-bedroom unit, fought the eviction, arguing in court that the converted warehouse's shoddy construction and aging ventilation system were to blame for the wayward odors.

Last Friday, a jury ruled in favor of the landlord and the eviction. Even though the landlord could have written a nonsmoking clause into the lease and didn't, the jury found that the couple's heavy smoking violated a more general clause banning ''any nuisance; any offensive noise, odor or fumes; or any hazard to health."

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:38 AM   0 comments

1. Bombing in Western country by Moslems kills innocent Westerners.
   
   
2. Moslems worry, loudly and publicly, about backlash.
   
   
   Arab newspapers urged Britain on Friday not to turn against Arabs and Muslims after bloody bomb attacks in London blamed on al Qaeda Islamist militants.
   
   While all editorials condemned the onslaught, some linked it to Britain's part in the Iraq invasion or its backing for a U.S.-declared "war on terror," which, they said, ignores the injustice of occupation fueling militancy in the Middle East.
   
   The Friday prayer preacher in Tehran said Britain, which has said Thursday's attacks bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda, should remember that Osama bin Laden's group was a U.S. creation.
   
   Beirut's English-language Daily Star predicted that Muslims would suffer more discrimination after the carnage in London.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:14 AM   0 comments

Debate erupted Thursday over federal funding for U.S. mass transit security after four bombs in London ripped through several commuter subway trains and one bus, killing at least 37 people and injuring hundreds more.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:45 AM   0 comments

Evan Hunter, who wrote the Ed McBain 87th Precinct detective series as well as novels including "The Blackboard Jungle," died of cancer of the larynx, his agent said. He was 78.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:19 AM   0 comments

A lifeguard in Santa Barbara, Calif., is recovering Wednesday after being attacked by a sea lion in the waters off El Capitan State Beach.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:14 AM   1 comments

British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.

Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said he wasn't aware of any Israeli casualties.

• Power Line guesses correctly!
  
  
• Michelle Malkin thinks the record will be corrected. Forget it, once AP ran the story, it became the truth forever to be covered up by, well, facts.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:02 AM   0 comments

opt-in broadcast email advertising is a completely legal method of reaching millions of people with your message instantly...

is your business or organization utilizing broadcast email advertising to reach millions of people a day for free...?

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:44 AM   0 comments

Nearly one-third of all state lottery tickets sold in southeastern Wisconsin last year were sold in poor neighborhoods, and players in these areas hoping to strike it rich have not seen as many big payoffs as the rest of the region, a Journal Sentinel analysis shows.

Longtime lottery player Tim Butler, who lives on Milwaukee's west side, didn't need to see the numbers to know that he and his neighbors are not exactly reaping big rewards from their investment in lottery tickets.

"I have never won any decent amount of money with tickets I bought in the inner city," said Butler, a Milwaukee County bus driver, shortly after returning home with another $20 worth of Pick 3 and Pick 4 tickets.

He said in the seven years he has been buying lottery tickets - usually several every day - his biggest prize has been $500 won in the Super Cash game with a ticket, he makes a point of noting, that he purchased on the city's south side.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:19 AM   0 comments

A NEW, dinkum, species of dolphin has been found living in the crystal waters of the Great Barrier Reef.

The Australian snubfin dolphin, or orcaella heinsohni, was originally believed to be the Irrawaddy dolphin, found in coastal waters and rivers in Asia and northern Australia.

But James Cook University Townsville marine researcher Isabel Beasley said yesterday investigations carried out in collaboration with Dr Peter Arnold from the Museum of Tropical Queensland revealed enough differences to identify the mammal as a new species.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:10 AM   0 comments

Could a computer coding job paying just $15 per hour signal something's wrong with the tech world?

Even so, the ad's wage does make one wonder if guest worker visas and the rise of offshoring are undermining U.S. tech careers--and by extension threatening the country's tech leadership.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:54 AM   1 comments

It seemed like a regular night at Mr. Frog's Bar on Brewster Avenue before a gunman entered about 6 p.m. Saturday, police said.

His first shot hit a man in the head. Then the woman he was dancing with and the gunman were fatally shot. Police, who have not released the victims' names, are investigating the incident as a murder-suicide and have no suspects.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:23 PM   0 comments

Nowadays, intrusive government is a liberal worry. Between the Patriot Act and the Supreme Court deciding that any claque of local official can, at their whim, seize your house and give it to his brother-in-law to develop into a Starbucks, Democrats have inherited the difficult task of keeping our leaders from seizing control of an ever-increasing slice of our lives.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:15 PM   0 comments

So for $550 million, here's how many more buses Metro could have put on the road every day of the year for 16 hours a day: 241 new bus routes for five years; 120 bus routes for 10 years; 80 bus routes for 15 years; or 60 for 20 years.

But Metro says about half of the passengers who ride MetroLink make between $50,000 and $75,000 a year. Only 17 percent of bus riders make that much. In fact, more than half of them make less than $15,000.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:01 PM   0 comments

• Both sides fear "stealth" nominee, observers say
  
  One wonders what observers these are. International appointment observers? Professional observers? I know it doesn't include me, because the Post-Dispatch never asked. But then, citizens are not engaged observers and independent thinkers. They're children to whom the press must explain things like they really are, not how they are portrayed on Fox News.
  
  
• Ranchers don't always report cattle diseases, some say
  
  Some ranchers? Some cattle diseases? No, wait, the "some" does refer to ranchers. Some ranchers say the other ranchers do illegal things. Why would businessmen say ill things about their competitors? Who cares, it's news!
  
  
• Man kills himself after standoff, police say
  
  Of course, the Post-Dispatch wants you to know that what follows is only the police story; actually, it's entirely possible that the police shot him dead with his own gun or that a Republican strangled the man and staged the whole crime to cover it up and used illegal capitalist profit to buy off the police. So of course the police would say it was attempted murder-successful suicide.
• Iran's president-elect wasn't hostage taker, ex-secret agent says
  
  Of course, that's Saeed Hajjarian, a top adviser to outgoing President Mohammad Khatami, so we have an Iranian ex-secret agent defending the newly-minted (and not elected) Iranian president. But the Post-Dispatch has conveyed as much gravitas as it can on the report by noting that it's a secret agent and someone who would know. Theirs, ours, it's all the same to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
  
  
• Vote fraud verdict won’t change results of Nov. 2 election, officials say
  
  Of course not, as a Democrat was elected. However, the story only seems to quote one official, and he says "I think it would be really difficult for a losing candidate to get a judge to overrule the election code," which is a far sight from won't. Perhaps the other officials said won't. Perhaps it was just the headline writer.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:41 PM   0 comments

A NASA spacecraft was speedily closing in on its target Friday, a comet scientists hope to smash open this weekend, producing celestial fireworks for the Independence Day weekend.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:34 AM   0 comments

Last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling approving a Connecticut city's plan to take private land by eminent domain may seem far away.

But to John Revelli, whose family has operated a tire shop near downtown Oakland for decades, the implications hit home on Friday.

A team of contractors hired by the city of Oakland packed the contents of his small auto shop in a moving van and evicted Revelli from the property his family has owned since 1949.

"I have the perfect location; my customers who work downtown can drop off their cars and walk back here," said Revelli, 65, pointing at the nearby high- rises. "The city is taking it all away from me to give someone else. It's not fair."

The city of Oakland, using eminent domain, seized Revelli Tire and the adjacent property, owner-operated Autohouse, on 20th Street between Telegraph and San Pablo avenues on Friday and evicted the longtime property owners, who have refused to sell to clear the way for a large housing development.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:09 AM   0 comments

The navy is back down to one working submarine.

Of the four used subs Canada acquired from Britain for $891 million, Halifax’s HMCS Windsor is the only one that can go to sea. HMCS Victoria has stopped sailing from its British Columbia base and will go into an extended docking work period next month that will last almost two years.

"We have no choice," said Lieut. Diane Grover of navy public affairs.

The navy expects to see its first sub fully operational and able to fire torpedoes by 2009.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:19 AM   0 comments

I'm generally a personal liberty, Milton Friedman, let-'em-buy-heroin-if-it-makes-'em-happy kind of guy. Yet I'm also always glad to see cigarette smoking restricted, basically, because it kills some people and annoys the rest (so would legal heroin, but heck, why be consistent? It's summertime).

We seem to be doing it the right way, too, slowly whittling away the social space allowed to smokers. Smoking has gone from being cool to being an embarrassing personal lapse, somewhere between picking your nose and bedwetting. Soon the guy standing on the corner smoking a cigarette will carry the same cachet as someone standing on the corner sucking wine out of a bottle in a bag.

I'm not gloating. I'm sad for cigarettes -- a lovely habit, a nice vice. Except for the kill-you part. But it's in society's interest to shuck them as soon as possible. Women used to paint their faces with white lead, but it had bad side effects, like death, so they got out of the practice. Habits change, if we're lucky.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:34 AM   1 comments