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Abuse Of Iraqi POWs By GIs Probed

According to the U.S. Army, one Iraqi prisoner was told to stand on a box with his head covered, wires attached to his hands. (Photo: CBS)

CBS reports:

(CBS) Last month, the U.S. Army announced 17 soldiers in Iraq, including a brigadier general, had been removed from duty after charges of mistreating Iraqi prisoners.

But the details of what happened have been kept secret, until now.

It turns out photographs surfaced showing American soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqis being held at a prison near Baghdad. The Army investigated, and issued a scathing report.

Now, an Army general and her command staff may face the end of long military careers. And six soldiers are facing court martial in Iraq -- and possible prison time.

Correspondent Dan Rather talks to one of those soldiers. And, for the first time, 60 Minutes II will show some of the pictures that led to the Army investigation.

According to the U.S. Army, one Iraqi prisoner was told to stand on a box with his head covered, wires attached to his hands. He was told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted.

It was this picture, and dozens of others, that prompted an investigation by the U.S. Army. On Tuesday, 60 Minutes II asked Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of coalition operations in Iraq, what went wrong.

“Frankly, I think all of us are disappointed by the actions of the few,” says Kimmitt. “Every day, we love our soldiers, but frankly, some days we're not always proud of our soldiers."

For decades under Saddam Hussein, many prisoners who were taken to the Abu Ghraib prison never came out. It was the centerpiece of Saddam’s empire of fear, and those prisoners who did make it out told nightmarish tales of torture beyond imagining – and executions without reason.

60 Minutes II talked about the prison and shared pictures of what Americans did there with two men who have extensive interrogation experience: Former Marine Lt. Col. Bill Cowan and former CIA Bureau Chief Bob Baer.

"I visited Abu Ghraib a couple of days after it was liberated. It was the most awful sight I've ever seen. I said, ‘If there's ever a reason to get rid of Saddam Hussein, it's because of Abu Ghraib,'” says Baer. “There were bodies that were eaten by dogs, torture. You know, electrodes coming out of the walls. It was an awful place."

"We went into Iraq to stop things like this from happening, and indeed, here they are happening under our tutelage,” says Cowan. It was American soldiers serving as military police at Abu Ghraib who took these pictures. The investigation started when one soldier got them from a friend, and gave them to his commanders. 60 Minutes II has a dozen of these pictures, and there are many more – pictures that show Americans, men and women in military uniforms, posing with naked Iraqi prisoners.

There are shots of the prisoners stacked in a pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English.

In some, the male prisoners are positioned to simulate sex with each other. And in most of the pictures, the Americans are laughing, posing, pointing, or giving the camera a thumbs-up.

60 Minutes II was only able to contact one of the soldiers facing charges. But the Army says they are all in Iraq, awaiting court martial.

"What can the Army say specifically to Iraqis and others who are going to see this and take it personally," Rather asked Kimmitt, in an interview conducted by satellite from Baghdad.

"The first thing I’d say is we’re appalled as well. These are our fellow soldiers. These are the people we work with every day, and they represent us. They wear the same uniform as us, and they let their fellow soldiers down,” says Kimmitt.

“Our soldiers could be taken prisoner as well. And we expect our soldiers to be treated well by the adversary, by the enemy. And if we can't hold ourselves up as an example of how to treat people with dignity and respect … We can't ask that other nations to that to our soldiers as well."

“So what would I tell the people of Iraq? This is wrong. This is reprehensible. But this is not representative of the 150,000 soldiers that are over here,” adds Kimmitt. “I'd say the same thing to the American people... Don't judge your army based on the actions of a few." One of the soldiers facing court martial is Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Chip Frederick.

Frederick is charged with maltreatment for allegedly participating in and setting up a photo, and for posing in a photograph by sitting on top of a detainee. He is charged with an indecent act for observing one scene. He is also charged with assault for allegedly striking detainees – and ordering detainees to strike each other.

60 Minutes II talked with him by phone from Baghdad, where he is awaiting court martial.

Frederick told us he will plead not guilty, claiming the way the Army was running the prison led to the abuse of prisoners.

“We had no support, no training whatsoever. And I kept asking my chain of command for certain things...like rules and regulations,” says Frederick. “And it just wasn't happening."

Six months before he faced a court martial, Frederick sent home a video diary of his trip across the country. Frederick, a reservist, said he was proud to serve in Iraq. He seemed particularly well-suited for the job at Abu Ghraib. He’s a corrections officer at a Virginia prison, whose warden described Frederick to us as “one of the best.”

Frederick says Americans came into the prison: “We had military intelligence, we had all kinds of other government agencies, FBI, CIA ... All those that I didn't even know or recognize."

Frederick's letters and email messages home also offer clues to problems at the prison. He wrote that he was helping the interrogators:

"Military intelligence has encouraged and told us 'Great job.' "

"They usually don't allow others to watch them interrogate. But since they like the way I run the prison, they have made an exception."

"We help getting them to talk with the way we handle them. ... We've had a very high rate with our style of getting them to break. They usually end up breaking within hours." According to the Army’s own investigation, that’s what was happening. The Army found that interrogators asked reservists working in the prison to prepare the Iraqi detainees, physically and mentally, for questioning.

What, if any actions, are being taken against the interrogators?

"I hope the investigation is including not only the people who committed the crimes, but some of the people that might have encouraged these crimes as well,” says Kimmitt. “Because they certainly share some level of responsibility as well."

But so far, none of the interrogators at Abu Ghraib are facing criminal charges. In fact, a number of them are civilians, and military law doesn’t apply to them.

One of the civilian interrogators at Abu Ghraib was questioned by the Army, and he told investigators he had "broken several tables during interrogations, unintentionally," while trying to "fear up" prisoners. He denied hurting anyone.

In our phone conversation, 60 Minutes II asked Frederick whether he had seen any prisoners beaten.

“I saw things. We had to use force sometimes to get the inmates to cooperate, just like our rules of engagement said,” says Frederick. “We learned a little bit of Arabic, basic commands. And they didn't want to listen, so sometimes, you would just give them a little nudge or something like that just to get them to cooperate so we could get the mission accomplished."

Attorney Gary Myers and a judge advocate in Iraq are defending Frederick. They say he should never have been charged, because of the failure of his commanders to provide proper training and standards.

"The elixir of power, the elixir of believing that you're helping the CIA, for God's sake, when you're from a small town in Virginia, that's intoxicating,” says Myers. “And so, good guys sometimes do things believing that they are being of assistance and helping a just cause. ... And helping people they view as important."

Frederick says he didn't see a copy of the Geneva Convention rules for handling prisoners of war until after he was charged.

The Army investigation confirms that soldiers at Abu Ghraib were not trained at all in Geneva Convention rules. And most were reservists, part-time soldiers who didn't get the kind of specialized prisoner of war training given to regular Army members.

Frederick also says there were far too few soldiers there for the number of prisoners: “There was, when I left, there was over 900. And there was only five soldiers, plus two non-commissioned officers, in charge for those 900 -- over 900 inmates."

Rather asked Kimmitt about understaffing. "That doesn't condone individual acts of criminal behavior no matter how tired we are. No matter how stretched we are, that doesn't give us license and it doesn't give us the authority to break the law,” says Kimmitt.

“That may have been a contributing factor, but at the end of the day, this is probably more about leadership, supervision, setting standards, abiding by the Army values and understanding what's right, and having the guts to say what's right.” Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinsky ran Abu Ghraib for the Army. She was also in charge of three other Army prison facilities that housed thousands of Iraqi inmates.

The Army investigation determined that her lack of leadership and clear standards led to problems system wide. Karpinski talked with 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft last October at Abu Ghraib, before any of this came out.

"This is international standards,” said Karpinski. “It's the best care available in a prison facility."

But the Army investigation found serious problems behind the scenes. The Army has photographs that show a detainee with wires attached to his genitals. Another shows a dog attacking an Iraqi prisoner. Frederick said that dogs were “used for intimidation factors.”

Part of the Army's own investigation is a statement from an Iraqi detainee who charges a translator - hired to work at the prison - with raping a male juvenile prisoner: "They covered all the doors with sheets. I heard the screaming. ...and the female soldier was taking pictures."

There is also a picture of an Iraqi man who appears to be dead -- and badly beaten.

"It's reprehensible that anybody would be taking a picture of that situation,” says Kimmitt.

But what about the situation itself?

“I don't know the facts surrounding what caused the bruising and the bleeding,” says Kimmitt. “If that is also one of the charges being brought against the soldiers, that too is absolutely unacceptable and completely outside of what we expect of our soldiers and our guards at the prisons."

Is there any indication that similar actions may have happened at other prisons? “I'd like to sit here and say that these are the only prisoner abuse cases that we're aware of, but we know that there have been some other ones since we've been here in Iraq,” says Kimmitt. When Saddam ran Abu Ghraib prison, Iraqis were too afraid to come ask for information on their family members.

When 60 Minutes II was there last month, hundreds had gathered outside the gates, worried about what is going on inside.

"We will be paid back for this. These people at some point will be let out,” says Cowan. “Their families are gonna know. Their friends are gonna know."

This is a hard story to have to tell when Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq. And for Cowan, it’s a personal issue. His son is an infantry soldier serving in Iraq for the last four months.

Rather asked Cowan what he would say to "that person who is sitting in their living room and saying, ‘I wish they wouldn't do this. It's undermining our troops and they shouldn't do it.’"

"If we don't tell this story, these kinds of things will continue. And we'll end up getting paid back 100 or 1,000 times over,” says Cowan. “Americans want to be proud of each and everything that our servicemen and women do in Iraq. We wanna be proud. We know they're working hard. None of us, now, later, before or during this conflict, should wanna let incidents like this just pass."

Kimmitt says the Army will not let what happened at Abu Ghraib just pass. What does he think is the most important thing for Americans to know about what has happened?

"I think two things. No. 1, this is a small minority of the military, and No. 2, they need to understand that is not the Army,” says Kimmitt. “The Army is a values-based organization. We live by our values. Some of our soldiers every day die by our values, and these acts that you see in these pictures may reflect the actions of individuals, but by God, it doesn't reflect my army."

Two weeks ago, 60 Minutes II received an appeal from the Defense Department, and eventually from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, to delay this broadcast -- given the danger and tension on the ground in Iraq.

60 Minutes II decided to honor that request, while pressing for the Defense Department to add its perspective to the incidents at Abu Ghraib prison. This week, with the photos beginning to circulate elsewhere, and with other journalists about to publish their versions of the story, the Defense Department agreed to cooperate in our report.

© MMIV, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved.

April 29, 2004

BASIC Computer Language Turns 40

J.M. HIRSCH, AP, reports:

10 PRINT "In 1963 two Dartmouth College math professors had a radical"
20 PRINT "idea - create a computer language muscular enough to harness"
30 PRINT "the power of the period's computers, yet simple enough that even"
40 PRINT "the school's janitors could use it."
50 END

(via Slashdot)

A year later on May 1, 1964, the BASIC computer programing language (as demonstrated above) was born and for the first time computers were taken out of the lab and brought into the community.

Forty years later pure BASIC - Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code - has all but disappeared, but its legacy lives on.

"This is the birth of personal computing," said Arthur Luehrmann, a former Dartmouth physics professor who is writing a book about BASIC's development at the university. "It was personal computing before people knew what personal computing was."

Paul Vick, a senior developer at Microsoft, said his company owes much to BASIC, the software giant's first product. Microsoft's Windows operating system and Office suite still use a descendent called Visual Basic.

BASIC was born in an age when computers were large, expensive and the exclusive province of scientists, many of whom were forced to buy research time on the nation's handful of machines.

Dartmouth math professors Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny envisioned something better, an unprecedented system that would give their entire school - from the faculty to the food service staff - simultaneous access to a computer.

Using existing technology called time sharing, the pair created a primitive network to allow multiple users to share a single computer through terminals scattered around campus.

With the help of students, Kurtz and Kemeny developed a commonsense language to run the system, relying on basic equations and commands, such as PRINT, LIST and SAVE.

John McGeachie, then a student, was there at 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, when BASIC came to life in the basement of Dartmouth's College Hall. Two terminals hooked up to a single computer ran two different programs.

"I don't think anybody knew how it would end up catching on," said McGeachie, now 61 and a software designer. "It was just enormously exciting for us as students to be working on something so many people said couldn't be done."

Within a short time nearly everyone at Dartmouth - a humanities-based college - had some BASIC experience. And it wasn't long before the business community took notice.

Kurtz said that by 1970 nearly 100 companies used BASIC systems to share and sell time on computers. And when computers eventually entered the consumer market, most used BASIC.

The popularity of BASIC waned as computers got more sophisticated, and newer languages were developed to take advantage of the power. Many of those languages, including the Internet's Java, have their roots in BASIC.

Harry McCracken, editor-in-chief of PC World magazine, laments BASIC's demise.

"On some level I think it's sad that it went away," he said. "People went from being creators of software to consumers."

Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Warflying Los Angeles

Mike Outmesguine, in thewirelessweblog, writes:

We all know what wardriving is - discovering wireless networks while driving some sort of ground-based vehicle. Warflying is kind of like that, except you are travelling at about 120 miles per hour and flying about 1500 above ground.

I went warflying over Los Angeles yesterday with a group of other Wi-Fi nuts and a representative from CNN. We had two planes flying in formation with Netstumbler, Kismet, and Airmagnet running. Plus we performed a video conference during the flight.

We think this is the first time anyone has done a plane-to-plane videoconference! And it worked great!

China Ups Pressure on Tibetan Monks Over Panchen Lama

KATHMANDU, April 9, 2004--Chinese authorities in Tibet are conducting a systematic indoctrination campaign in a major monastery aimed at forcing Tibetan monks to accept a Panchen Lama chosen by Beijing, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports.

Officials from the religious affairs department and other sections of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) government have been paying twice-weekly visits to the Tashi Lhunpo monastery--the monastery of the teenaged Panchen Lama they hope to suppress--to conduct "study sessions," Tibetan sources told RFA's Tibetan service.

Chinese officials in the TAR, contacted by telephone, said they were unaware of any such efforts in the Tashi Lhunpo monastery.

"The monks are under so much pressure to recognize the Chinese Panchen Lama," one source said. "The Chinese government started its re-education program for monks to recognize the Chinese-appointed Panchen Lama by holding education sessions. The first session began in 1998 and lasted for four and a half months."

"Since then, the study sessions have continued twice a week," the source said, adding that government officials ran the sessions in person from 3-5 p.m. at the monastery. "The Chinese government is asking the monks to recognize their candidate as the real reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, and it is trying to convince the monks they followed all of the proper procedures [for selecting their Panchen Lama]," he said.

The Chinese-selected Panchen Lama, Gyaincain Norbu, is rarely seen in public and is closely guarded by the Chinese government. Beijing claims to have followed the proper procedures for selecting its Panchen Lama--by putting the candidates' names into a golden urn.

The Dalai Lama-appointed Panchen Lama, Gendun Choekyi Nyima, who has been under virtual house arrest since 1995 when he was six years old, recently was reported by the Chinese Foreign Ministry to be leading a "happy, normal" life in China.

The Tibetan government-in-exile says it found the boy following a search of several years, using a variety of divination procedures, and that his reincarnation as Gendun Choekyi Nyima was confirmed by several oracles.

According to the government-in-exile's Web site, when the boy was first able to speak he said, "I am the Panchen, my monastery is Tashi Lhunpo. I sit on a high throne. My monasteries are in Tsang, in Lhasa, and in China."

The appointment of the Panchen Lama is of great significance to Tibetan Buddhists because he typically leads the search for the reincarnated Dalai Lama.

The Panchen Lama is Tibetan Buddhism's second most prominent figure, after the Dalai Lama. The Chinese government insists insist that Gyaltsen Norbu, the boy it selected in 1995, is the Panchen Lama's 11th reincarnation.

Gyaltsen Norbu made his second highly orchestrated visit to Tibetan areas in August last year, and his public appearances were marked by a heavy security. Most Tibetan Buddhists recognize Gendun Choekyi Nyima as the Panchen Lama instead.

According to the 2003 State Department report on human rights around the world, Chinese officials last year "acknowledged that monks and nuns continued to undergo mandatory political education or 'patriotic education' on a regular basis at their religious sites. Training sessions were aimed at enforcing compliance with government regulations, and either cowing or weeding out monks and nuns who refused to follow Party directives and who remained sympathetic to the Dalai Lama."

This article provided by:
Radio Free Asia www.rfa.org
via Snow Lion Publications
http://www.snowlionpub.com/pages/news4.php

Everyone is an editor

Sam Williams, Salon, writes:

April 27, 2004 | Like most frontier sheriffs, Wikipedia Arbitration Committee member Martin Harper wears his badge with a mixture of pride and caution.

A 24-year-old software engineer from Worcester, England, Harper knows what it's like to be new. It was only two years ago, after all, that Harper, an immigrant fresh in from the Douglas Adams "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" online encyclopedia project, H2G2, encountered the scary freedom of wiki publishing -- where pretty much anyone can add his or her own thoughts to a Web site, even if that means overwriting or "correcting" what someone has already written.

"I think, like most people, I came across the idea and thought, 'This is madness,'" says Harper, looking back. "On [H2G2] you could have maybe five people editing an article. On Wikipedia you could have 50 people editing at once with no one person in control."

Today, Harper is one of a select few working to impose a civilized order on what has become one of the Internet's fastest growing boomtowns. Launched in January 2001 with barely a dozen articles, Wikipedia crossed the 500,000 articles mark in February, with posters contributing content in more than 30 languages and, by last measure, at a rate of 300,000 articles per year.

Needless to say, so much activity generates plenty of controversy and plenty of work for Harper and the nine other members of the Arbitration Committee. Whether that means throwing cold water on recurring editorial battles over Israel and Iraq or deciding whether a ban on offensive user names such as "Mr. Throbbing Monster Cock," the disputes can vary from the mundane to the humorous to the truly informative all within the space of a single day.

"The hardest problems are always at the lowest level," he says. "People being rude, people refusing to compromise. We have a guy whose skill is copy editing. However, unlike most copy editors, he's quite stubborn and adamant about what's proper for articles. He won't budge and people have been complaining. After far too much discussion amongst the community, it was referred to us the second time. We're trying to ease it. We can't get rid of it."

Such problems, Harper notes, are common to any site that embraces the wiki model. First coined in the mid-1990s by Portland, Ore., programmer Ward Cunningham, "wiki" is the technical name for a site that lets readers edit the published content in real time. Borrowed from a Hawaiian term for "very fast" (wiki wiki), the term dates back to Cunningham's Wiki Wiki Web, an experimental offshoot of the Portland Pattern Repository that first offered readers an "edit this page" link in 1995.

"It was something that needed to exist," says Cunningham, recalling his decision to invite a few dozen fellow programmers to test out the wiki feedback model. "I thought if [WikiWikiWeb] lasted six months, it would still be worth it.

Nine years later, the wiki model is flourishing, mostly in venues where publishers put a value on feedback and informational utility. The Apache Ant Project, for example, uses wikis to make sure readers can correct or improve user guides related to the open-source Apache Web server. Even Microsoft, a company for which Cunningham now works, has gotten in on the act, embedding a wiki page within its recently unveiled Channel 9 external weblog.

Of all the variants out there, however, few have attracted as much attention as Wikipedia. Originally a free-range alternative to Nupedia, a commercial online encyclopedia project of the late 1990s, the project has since become the world's largest wiki with more than 1,200 regular contributors posting and revising content in more than 30 languages.

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of both Nupedia and the Wikipedia project, credits "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," Eric Raymond's online essay on the merits of decentralized software design, for prompting the experiment. Like Cunningham before him, Wales says he saw his venture into wiki as a temporary thing, an experiment that needed to be tried if only to satisfy his own "what if?" curiosity.

"Nupedia was very top down," says Wales. "We recruited academics to write the articles. We had a peer review board. After nearly two years of work and an enormous amount of money, I think we had 12 articles to show for it. Wikipedia was totally different. With the wiki software, bam, things just took off. It very quickly became the project."

Inviting the community to participate in such a project has its risks, of course. Thanks to developments outside the Wikipedia community, the project has seen its media profile surge in recent weeks. The episode started when anti-Semitic Internet users pulled off the agitprop technique known as "Google-bombing" -- repeatedly linking the word "Jew" on Web pages to the Web site JewWatch.com, a site that bills itself as "Keeping a Close Watch on Jewish Communities & Organizations Worldwide." When the tactic propelled JewWatch to the top of Google search rankings, outraged bloggers, led by the site Remove JewWatch.com, responded by linking the word "Jew" to the Wikipedia entry.

The resulting flood of visitors has been both a positive and a negative. Izak, a pseudonymous Wikipedia contributor on topics related to Jewish history, has more than once seen 5,000 words of his editorial work replaced by a single one-paragraph anti-Semitic screed.

"Every few days somebody comes in and vandalizes the site," he says. "So many people are watching the page, though, that it doesn't take long before some admin comes in to fix the page."

As one of those admins, Harper describes Wikipedia's vandalism policy as fairly easy to enforce. Most vandals get a two-strikes allowance. On the third offense, administrators block the offending poster's I.P. address, preventing them from accessing the site. Though some find a new way back in, taunting the admins as they do so, most casual vandals get bored and find other places to ply their hatred.

Wales, who inaugurated this "three strikes" policy during the days when his role as Wikipedia's co-creator put him in the self-described role of "god king," sees it as a cornerstone of the site's overall "soft security" policy. The policy is, in many ways, a Darwinian response to the pressures that undermine most open Internet communities. Instead of courting controversy, Wikipedia's culture has evolved an almost religious aversion to it.

"We talk about 'wiki love,'" says Wales. "We say, hey, if you think this is Usenet and you're supposed to flame people you're really out of line. We really don't approve of that as a community."

A key tenet of "wiki love" is a devotion to NPOV, Wikipedian for "neutral point of view." Articles don't have to be perfect, but they should be free of bias. As an example, Wales cites the 2000 U.S. presidential election. "Two people who disagree vehemently about whether or not it was a fair outcome can at least agree with the description that there was a controversy."

All wikis run the risk of vandalism. Not all wikis have been bold enough to adapt a neutral content policy. Such distinctions, notes Sunir Shah, a University of Toronto computer scientist who contributes to both Wikipedia and his own wiki project, MeatballWiki, make Wikipedia something of a rogue variant in the wiki world.

"They're not interested in having discussions and learning in a dialectic kind of way," argues Shah. "Their goal is to build an encyclopedia, and that changes everything. They don't want to have opinions and they want everything to look appropriate, which means they have to spend a lot of extra time going after vandalism and trolling."

Offering MeatballWiki as a counterexample, Shah says most traditional wikis evolve along the lines of a dialectic or Talmudic discussion. Readers respond to but rarely overwrite previous' authors comments, leaving room for future readers to follow the conversational evolution. In such a scenario, opinion is more than valued: It's practically necessary to keep the conversation moving.

"At MeatballWiki we are kind of happy dealing with the social problems," Shah says. "We have this saying that Meatball will be around in 50 years, so why worry. We can come to a better answer over time."

Harper, who also contributes to MeatballWiki, shares the rogue variant view. Because of its encyclopedic ambitions, Wikipedia has had to adopt new levels of management and security -- log-in names, I.P. address blocks, arbitration and deletion committees -- that most wikis never have to worry about.

"If anything I would say the wiki is more suited to those smaller-scale projects, he says. "As wikis get larger you run into the problem of troublesome users. You can't manage it like the small group where you say, 'We're not going to invite you down to the pub anymore.'"

Wales, on the other hand, sees that level of familiarity operating at the editorial level, where most people who groom the site and have taken on voluntary management tasks have been around long enough to know the major players. Like other scalable open development projects, Linux most notably, Wikipedia has succeeded in passing on its internal cultural values to newcomers encouraged by the project's overall ambitions. To further fuel that ambition and underwrite costs, Wales says he is already talking with some of the larger search engine players about licensing specific portions of the Wikipedia knowledge base and is talking with a publisher about putting out an official 1.0 version.

A few kinks have to be worked out between now and then, of course. With no formal Q-and-A mechanism, Wikipedia would have to ship its 1.0 version free of guarantees. Readers hoping to catch up on the history of World War I might stumble onto a porn star biography or vice versa. Supposing project leaders did take the time to download and vet Wikipedia content, releasing it on a static format such as CD-ROM, a new question emerges: Is a static version of Wikipedia still Wikipedia? In the Schrodinger's cat paradox of wiki publishing -- where the only way to verify an article's quality is to keep checking it -- never knowing what you're going to find is half the fun.

Despite such complicating factors, Wales is optimistic. A fundraising campaign on the project's third anniversary drew $50,000, more than double the $20,000 target, and Wales says he is currently saving the reserve funds for servers and other future project needs.

"From the beginning, we've never known how it was going to scale," he says, acknowledging the doubts. "There was always that concern as to, if things got too much bigger, would it all just degenerate into garbage?"

Three years later, the concerns are still there. The only difference, of course, is that 1,200 people instead of a dozen people now have a stake in seeing Wikipedia succeed. Reflecting on the project's continued growth, Wales laughs.

"I can't believe that it works, but it works," he says.

[Couple] Sacked for photo Americans weren't meant to see

Caroline Overington, The Sydney Morning Herald Correspondent in New York writes:

Last Sunday a newspaper in Seattle, Washington, published a rare photograph of soldiers' coffins, each of them containing the body of an American who had died in Iraq.

The coffins, each draped with the Stars and Stripes, had been loaded into the back of a cargo aircraft for a final journey to the US, where they would be buried. There were at least 18 of them in the picture, which was taken by a 50-year-old civilian contractor, Tami Silicio.

On Wednesday Ms Silicio was sacked from her job, for taking the photograph and sharing it with news organisations.

Ms Silicio worked for Maytag Aircraft Corporation, which has a $US18 million ($25 million) contract to handle cargo for the US Government at Kuwait airport.

As part of that job she would often see soldiers' coffins in the back of aircraft, on their way from Iraq to burial in the US.

Earlier this month - which has been one of the deadliest for coalition soldiers - Ms Silicio decided to photograph the coffins. She asked a friend, Amy Katz, to forward the image to her local newspaper, The Seattle Times.

Ms Katz said she was "amazed" when she saw the photo. "I immediately picked up the telephone and because [Ms Silicio] is from Washington state, I called The Seattle Times," she said. "Tami wanted to share the image with the American people."

The US military generally bans photographs of soldiers' coffins, and few have been published in US newspapers during the war in Iraq. On Wednesday Ms Silicio engaged an agent, who offered her photograph to newspaper outlets for $1400 for one-time, non-exclusive use.

The editor of the Times, Mike Fancher, said in a column this week that he decided to publish the photograph on the front page because it was "undeniably newsworthy". Readers would have "differing reactions to the photo, depending on their views of the war", he said.

The managing editor of The Seattle Times, David Boardman, told the magazine Editor & Publisher this week that "we weren't attempting to convey any sort of political message".

He disagreed with the military ban on photographs of coffins, saying: "The Administration cannot tell us what we can and cannot publish."

Ms Katz said that after the picture was published Ms Silicio was "called into her supervisor's office and severely reprimanded. She explained why she did it, but they sacked her and her husband [David Landry] too". She said Ms Silicio "really wanted mothers of the soldiers to know how the coffins were handled".

In an interview with The Seattle Times, Ms Silicio said the coffins were prayed over and saluted before being shipped.

"Everyone salutes with such emotion and respect," she said. "The families would be proud to see their sons and daughters saluted like that."

She said she had seen a coffin accompanied by the wife and, in another case, by the father of the fallen soldier.

William Silva, the president of Maytag Aircraft, was quoted by The Seattle Times as saying the sackings had been for violating US government and company regulations.

Copyright  © 2004. The Sydney Morning Herald.

Women's Rally Draws Vast Crowd

Marchers react to one of many luminaries who spoke during the rally on the Mall in this view looking west toward the Washington Monument from the Third Street stage. (Photograph by: Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post )

Cameron W. Barr and Elizabeth Williamson, Washington Post Staff Writers, report:

Hundreds of thousands of people filled the Mall and marched along Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday to show their support for abortion rights, loudly identifying President Bush as the leading enemy of "reproductive freedom."

Organizers of the March for Women's Lives said they had drawn 1.15 million people, which would make it the largest abortion rights gathering in history. "This has been the largest march for reproductive rights, the largest march for women's rights and the largest march of any kind in this country," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women.

Police would not issue an official estimate, but some veteran commanders said the crowd was at least the biggest since the 1995 Million Man March, which independent researchers put at 870,000 people. D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey would say only that he thought the march had met and perhaps exceeded its organizers' expectations. Their march permit was for as many as 750,000.

Celebrities, from entertainers to politicians to activists, lent their shine to the event. Actors Cybill Shepherd and Whoopi Goldberg attended, as did singers Ani DiFranco and Moby. Feminist icons Patricia Ireland and Gloria Steinem were there, and so were former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Billionaire Ted Turner was there. So was NAACP Chairman Julian Bond.

"If all we do is march today," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) told the crowd, "that will not change the direction this country is headed under this administration."

Several blocks away, on Pennsylvania Avenue, Jay Rhodes of Alexandria held a sign equating abortion with the Holocaust. He shouted sarcastically, "Keep murder legal" when marchers challenged his views. "It's very hostile," said Rhodes, 52, who said he came on his own to join counter-protesters who lined part of the march route. "There's a lot of anger on both sides."

As the marchers thronged 14th Street yesterday afternoon, Guilford College sophomore Parks Marion, 19, recalled his mother dragging him through the same streets during a 1992 abortion-rights rally. Then, he complained about the walk. Yesterday, in the midst of a take-two-steps-and-stop pedestrian crush, he marveled at "just the sheer number" of people. "It's overwhelming and it's wonderful," he said.

Organizers sought to transcend the polarizing issue of abortion, portraying the event as the work of a coalition of groups that want to improve women's access to reproductive education health care worldwide. But the dominant themes of the day were two. Again and again, march participants vowed that abortion was here to stay. And that Bush had to go.

Bush stayed at Camp David in the Maryland mountains until late afternoon, when he returned to the capital. The White House issued a statement that began on a conciliatory note and then turned to administration policies that are popular with conservatives. "The president believes we should work to build a culture of life in America and regardless of where one stands on the issue of abortion, we can all work together to reduce the number of abortions through promotion of abstinence-education programs, support for parental-notification laws and continued support for banning partial-birth abortion," the statement said.

Earlier, Jeanne Clark, spokesperson for the Feminist Majority, one of the organizations behind the march, said that while President Bill Clinton was in office, women felt that his veto could protect them. Now, she said, growing concern about Bush administration initiatives has prompted women to march anew to show their concerns. The last major abortion rights rally on the Mall took place in April 1992, seven months before Clinton was elected.

In 2001, shortly after taking office, Bush barred the government from funding international organizations that use money from other sources to provide abortions or information about terminating a pregnancy. On April 1, he signed a bill that made it a federal crime to harm or kill a fetus during the commission of another federal crime.

That law defined an "unborn child" as "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb," alarming abortion rights advocates, who challenged the bill in three federal courts even before Bush signed it.

The Bush administration also has not made it possible to obtain the so-called morning after pill, also known as emergency contraception, without a prescription.

Concerned about what they saw as an erosion of rights, the Feminist Majority joined NARAL Pro-Choice America, the American Civil Liberties Union, Black Women's Health Imperative, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, NOW and Planned Parenthood Federation of America to fight it.

Holding a red fly swatter that said "Stop Bush," Carmen Barroso, a New York-based regional director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, called the day a "mobilization against the war against reproductive rights and reproductive health."

A few feet away, sitting in a folding chair under one of the Mall's shade trees, retired IBM employee Franz Hespenheide of Gaithersburg seemed almost reassured by what he was witnessing. "To see all these people," he said, "just reinforces our belief that this government has to go."

Sandra Kauffman, crouched in the grass next to her three-wheel bike, watched with tears in her eyes as four lawyers approached the stage -- they had argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of abortion rights. "It's been a long fight. It's incredible to see," Kauffman said.

In the last presidential election, Steve Baker, 40, voted for Bush. But Baker said he told his wife, Cindy Maloney, 34, that if he felt women's rights were being compromised in a Bush administration, he would be the first to march with her at an event such as yesterday's. "I really didn't think this was going to happen," he said.

Many people wore or carried signs that displayed their political views. One popular placard featured a portrait of Bush and the phrase "one-term president."

Bob Kunst of Miami had flown in Saturday night to sell 40,000 anti-Bush bumper stickers. On the Mall yesterday, one hand held the stickers and the other a thick wad of cash. "We're doing incredibly well," he said.

The signs in the bus windows at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium's Parking Lot 3 -- one of several staging areas -- read like an atlas of Northeast and Great Lakes states. Big cities and small towns were listed on the placards, including Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Millersville, Lancaster and Durham.

Kay Kennard had marched for civil rights in the '60s and had been to Washington many times chaperoning students on field trips. But yesterday, the retired teacher emerged from a nine-hour bus ride that began in the Cleveland suburb of Beachwood to help teach a lesson to her 15-year-old niece, Brytney Saulters. "We want the right of women to make their own choices," Kennard said.

Buses lined several blocks along 22nd and East Capitol streets, while about 800 filled four parking lots outside the stadium. At 10:30 a.m., people filled the sidewalk for a block and a half waiting to get into the Stadium-Armory Metro station.

Katie Panella, 19, slapped a pink sticker on her right thigh and clutched a "Stop Violence Against Women" poster in front of her Brown University women's rugby jacket as she strode towards the station.

Though a little bleary-eyed from the trip from Providence, R.I., she looked forward to showing the importance of mobilizing voters against Bush's policies. "He's a threat to women's rights," she said. "It's just exciting to have so many young people out marching."

Charlotte Hummel, 47, chairs the Landsdowne, Pa., Democratic Party, and came yesterday to show her 9-year-old daughter, Zoe Farquhar, "a major national event." Hummel said that women have long been at the wrong end of government intrusion into their bodies. "If you control women's bodies, you control their lives."

There were several hundred antiabortion activists lining the route of the march, exchanging shouts with the marchers. Police reported no physical clashes, however.

As the march surged down Pennsylvania Avenue, Bertram Lee, 14, of Northwest pulled a cell phone from his pocket and left a message for his girlfriend, who couldn't attend. "I'm wearing a pink shirt and a yellow sash, and I'm proud of it," he said, his voice filled with emotion. "I just wanted to tell her I love her," he explained after the call. "This is amazing."

About 20 feet back from the front line, a tall, slender man in a linen jacket towered above the women around him, walking with a meditative air. It was NAACP leader Julian Bond. "Crowds have a calming influence on me," he said, craning his neck from side to side. " I've been through a lot of these but never on a pro-choice march. We've supported the pro-choice movement since 1968 but never endorsed something like this."

Dinah Finkelstein, a 16-year-old student, came to the Mall by Metro from her home in Northwest. She said she was "amazed" by the scene, and she looked it, gazing in all directions at the crowds around her. "This is really a defensive measure," she observed, "against everyone out there who doesn't think that we deserve a choice."

While it was clear that the march was organized to oppose any infringement of a woman's constitutional right to an abortion, as enshrined in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, some of the other goals were harder to divine.

The official march posters and banners cited eight words -- choice, justice, access, health, abortion, global, family planning -- offering several objectives.

Many people defined their own agendas. "I want 'Pro-choice, Pro-child,' " Roberta Blumberg, 53, told volunteers handing out signs yesterday morning. She already juggled two yellow and purple "Who decides?" signs attached to hollow cardboard tubes, but she wanted to modify one with a pro-child statement.

"It's important to look past focusing on abortion rights," said Adia Harvey, 27, a Johns Hopkins University instructor who lives in Lanham. "You have to put abortion in the context of women's reproductive freedom," which she defined as full access to contraceptive technology and sex education.

She said organizers had done a better job than in the past of broadening the agenda, but she and some of her co-marchers agreed that the bottom line was defending the right to an abortion. "It seems a pity that it comes down to this," said Tahi Reynolds, who works for an nonprofit education organization in the District.

Organizers announced yesterday afternoon that they had surpassed a million marchers, reaching that conclusion after they said they had passed out more than a million stickers. Alice Cohan, the march director, said 2,500 trained volunteers were given stickers -- reading "count me in" -- that they pasted on people as they got off buses or entered the march area.

Police would not make a formal estimate. Veteran officers who had been on hand for marches and demonstrations in years past said it was the biggest such gathering since the Million Man March in 1995, a gathering whose size was hotly disputed and that led to the discontinuation of crowd estimates by U.S. Park Police. After that march, a team of researchers recounted the crowd from photos and set the number at 870,000, with a margin of error that offered a range for the turnout from 655,000 to 1.1 million.

Officers disagreed about whether the march matched or surpassed the number at the Million Man March, but many veterans of such gatherings put the figure at at least 500,000. Acting Park Police Chief Dwight Pettiford flew above the crowd in his agency's helicopter and said the "entire Mall was covered with people." "I don't know if they achieved their numbers or not, but there were lots and lots of people," Pettiford said.

Metro reported large numbers of riders. Spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said that as of 5 p.m., 320,138 riders had entered the system, more than double last Sunday's ridership but far below weekday average of 670,000, she said. And homebound demonstrators were delayed after a bus became stuck in an underpass near RFK Stadium. By nighttime, the bus was dislodged and traffic was moving.

U.S. Park Police arrested 16 protesters from the Christian Defense Coalition about 3 p.m. for demonstrating without a permit.

Sgt. Scott Fear said the group had permission to demonstrate along Pennsylvania Avenue but moved into an area designated for the March for Women's Lives.

"We gave them three warnings," he said. "They decided that 16 of them were going to stay, so [those] 16 were arrested and charged."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Monday, April 26, 2004; Page A01

Ex-N.F.L. Player Is Killed in Combat

BILL PENNINGTON, The New York Times. reports:

Pat Tillman, whose decision to give up a lucrative N.F.L. career to join the Army Rangers made him one of the most public examples of patriotism in the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was killed Thursday "when his patrol vehicle came under attack," the Pentagon said in a statement released last night.

Tillman, 27, was a specialist assigned to the Army's Second Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. It was the first American casualty in Afghanistan since March 18.

Military officials in Kabul said yesterday that his unit was patrolling one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan, close to the Pakistani border, in a valley where Al Qaeda and Taliban forces are known to cross into Afghanistan from Pakistan. American forces have been on special alert in recent weeks, watching for Al Qaeda and other fighters escaping an operation by Pakistani forces on their side of the border.

Tillman joined the Army in June 2002, spurning a three-year, $3.6 million contract offer from the Arizona Cardinals. Tillman, a safety and one of the team's most popular players, had told friends and teammates that the events of Sept. 11 inspired him to try to contribute directly to the antiterrorism effort. Tillman, who enlisted with his brother, Kevin, shunned all interviews throughout his time in the Army, even late last year, after he returned from a tour of duty in Iraq.

"He and Kevin were very proud to be Rangers," Dave McGinnis, who was his coach when he played with Arizona, said yesterday. "But he was adamant that he did not want to be singled out from all of his brothers and sisters in the armed forces. He did not think he was doing anything different than they were doing."

McGinnis said he last saw Tillman in December, when Pat and Kevin attended a Cardinals game in Seattle. The Tillmans, who were stationed at Fort Lewis in Washington State, met privately with the team and spoke for hours with McGinnis the night before the game. They avoided reporters after the game by leaving the locker room through a side door.

"He seemed very happy to be around the team again, and Pat had every intention of coming back into the N.F.L when his time with the Army was complete," McGinnis said. "As he left that day, he thanked me for letting him come by and I said, `No, Pat, thank you.' That's the last thing I said to him."

Tillman becomes the most high-profile casualty of the American war effort in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was not clear when Tillman went to Afghanistan. He and his wife, Marie, would have celebrated their second anniversary next month.

After completing Ranger training, he served in Iraq with the elite 75th Ranger Regiment. In an interview earlier this year, the Tillmans' father, Patrick Tillman Sr., said his sons would not tell him much about their time in Iraq.

The Tillmans' desire to avoid publicity when it came to their service in the Army was evident early: they drove to Denver from Phoenix to enlist, believing that Army officials in Colorado would be less likely to recognize the Tillman name than those in Arizona. Pat Tillman had been a star at Arizona State before joining the Cardinals in 1998. Kevin Tillman was also a professional athlete, playing in the minor leagues of the Cleveland Indians' organization.

Pat Tillman had long ago established a reputation as a hard-hitting overachiever who longed to do more with his life than play football. "Forrest Gump with smarts," a college teammate called him. "He has to do everything — the right thing and the extraordinary thing."

An undersized linebacker at Arizona State, Tillman was an avid rock climber, and he was known to sneak into the university's football stadium after hours so he could scale the 200-foot light towers. Tillman said the perch at the top of the towers was a good place to meditate.

Though named the Pacific-10 Conference Defensive Player of the Year as a senior at Arizona State, Tillman was not deemed a top pro prospect because he was only 5 feet 11 inches and 200 pounds. McGinnis scouted Tillman and thought he had a chance to make the transition from linebacker to safety.

"I remember we went to work him out for 15 minutes," said McGinnis, who was fired by the Cardinals at the end of last season and is now an assistant coach with the Tennessee Titans. "The workout ended up taking 45 minutes, because Pat wouldn't let us stop the drills until he did every one perfectly."

The Cardinals selected Tillman in the seventh round of the 1998 draft (the 226th pick over all) and he became an immediate success as a special teams player. Popular with his teammates, he also stood out for other reasons. He did not own a car, choosing instead to ride a bicycle to the Cardinals' training complex each day. He had shoulder-length hair that flowed out of the back of his helmet when he ran. In the locker room, he was noted for his diligence in the weight room and for engaging his teammates in lengthy philosophical discussions on a variety of cultural topics.

He became a starter midway through his rookie season and by 2000, when he set a team record with 224 tackles, Tillman was respected enough in the league that the Super Bowl champion St. Louis Rams offered him a $9 million, five-year contract. Tillman rejected the offer, saying that he wanted to be loyal to the Cardinals because they had given him a chance out of college. He played that season for $512,000.

Arizona players and coaches said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks had affected Tillman deeply. McGinnis said he had not been entirely surprised when Tillman came to him in May 2002 and informed him of his plan to enlist in the Army. Tillman had just returned from his honeymoon.

"But I wasn't shocked," McGinnis said. "The essence of the man was to help somewhere else if he felt he was needed to help."

The United States military in Kabul said that the death occurred about 7:30 p.m. Afghan time Thursday; two other Americans were also wounded and an Afghan soldier was killed in the clash.

Part of a coalition combat patrol, the soldiers were near the village of Spera, southwest of their base in the town of Khost. When attacked, the coalition patrol returned fire, according to a United States military statement released in Kabul. The enemy forces broke contact, and it is not known if any enemy soldiers were killed or wounded in the clash.

One of his closest friends from Arizona State, Denver Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer, said: "Today is a very sad day. My condolences go out to Pat's family and wife. We lost a unique individual that touched the lives of many with his love for life, his toughness, his intellect and the many unique qualities he possessed. Pat Tillman lived life to the fullest and will be remembered forever in my heart and mind."

The White House issued a statement of sympathy, praising Tillman as "an inspiration on and off the field."

Jets cornerback David Barrett played with Tillman at Arizona for two years. "It is a tragedy that it had to happen to one of the finer guys in life," he said. "What other person do you know would give up a life in the N.F.L. to defend what he believes in with his own life?"

Randy Zimmer, who coached Tillman in high school, said he saw Tillman at a wedding last summer. "He was feeling everyone was making a big deal of it, and he hadn't seen a lot of action," Zimmer said, adding that Tillman had told him, " `I haven't even fired my weapon yet.' "

Last year, the Tillman brothers won the Arthur Ashe Courage award at the ESPY Awards. They declined to attend the ceremony.

Carlotta Gall in Afghanistan and Carol Pogash in San Francisco contributed reporting for this article.

Night, Dawn, Day

A woman wishes the world would go away. One day, it does.
Is it the end of the world, or the beginning?

A DV short film by Marc Pilvinsky.
It's about how the things we own eventually come to own us.

NIGHT/DAWN/DAY
(c) 1999 by Marc Pilvinsky
FADE IN. A beautiful sky. PAN DOWN to:
EXT. POOL -- DAY
A pool party behind a nice suburban home. It's summer.
A few people cook hamburgers and hot dogs while others lounge in the shade. A game of water-basketball is in full swing in the shallow end. ALAINA, 29, stands at the edge of the pool, soaking it all in.
ALAINA (V.O.)
For a long time, I haven't been happy.
Alaina looks around the party. In SLOW-MOTION, we see each little moment -- the grill, the lounging, the laughing, kids playing, the basketball teetering on the edge of the basket, a woman floating on a raft.
ALAINA (V.O.)
I don't know when it started -- maybe it's always been there and the white-noise of my everyday kept it from coming in clearly. It's a deep, whispering voice from inside, telling me I should know better, I should be better, that this isn't the life for me.
Alaina steps off the edge and is submerged in the pool.
EXT. POOL. UNDERWATER -- DAY
Alaina sinks to the bottom and curls up in the fetal position. Her eyes are closed.
ALAINA (V.O.)
I'd been harboring a secret desire for the world to go away.
In the far background, we can see legs of the people playing water-basketball. We move into a closer shot of Alaina, and the background people move out of frame. Alaina can't hold her breath any longer, so she releases from the fetal position and goes back to the surface.
EXT. POOL -- DAY
Alaina's head breaks the surface of the water. We're in a tight CU of her face. We pull back to reveal the entire pool and patio. Everyone is gone.
ALAINA (V.O.)
One day, it did.
There is no one around. Everything looks the same, but the party guests have vanished.
Alaina looks around, taking in the scene from the middle of the pool. She swims to the shallow end, where she sees the basketball roll to a stop. She leaves the pool.
ALAINA
Hello? Anybody there? Helloooo?
She grabs a towel and wraps it around herself. The grill is still on, and hamburgers and hot dogs are sizzling. Alaina flips over the burgers and turns off the grill. She enters the house.
ALAINA
Anybody in here?
INT. NICE HOME. LIVINGROOM -- DAY
Alaina enters the room. The TV blares static. She goes over and turns it off. There are potato chips and dip on the couch. A half-eaten burger is there too. Alaina picks up the plate with the burger and looks at it.
INT. NICE HOME. HALLWAY -- DAY
Alaina wanders the halls of the same house. She looks in each room and moves on.
EXT. NICE HOME. FRONT DOOR -- DAY
Alaina opens the front door and steps outside. The neighborhood is eerily quiet. There are no cars moving; no people. She screams at the silence.
ALAINA
Heyyyyyyyy!
EXT. SUBURBAN STREET -- DAY
She walks down the street. There is a car stopped in the middle of a lane. It's still running.
ALAINA (V.O.)
It was no use. It had happened. I wanted to be alone, and sometimes, even the most fucked-up wishes come true.
EXT. HOUSE #2 -- DAY
Alaina approaches another house. She knocks, then turns the doorknob.
INT. HOUSE #2 -- DAY
Alaina enters cautiously.
ALAINA
Hello? If there's anyone here, please don't shoot me.
She walks through the house.
ALAINA (V.O.)
I have no idea who lived here. I've never been here before.
EXT. RESTAURANT -- DAY
Alaina walks down a stip mall sidewalk, peering in the windows. She opens the door to a sandwich shop.
INT. RESTAURANT -- DAY
Alaina enters. There is food on several of the tables. On one, a cigarette has burned itself all the way down -- the ashes are two inches long. Alaina smells something. He goes to the kitchen.
INT. RESTAURANT. KITCHEN -- DAY
Alaina covers her nose from an awful smell, and turns off the skillet, which has burned some kind of food into a charcoal-like state. Alaina fans away some smoke, and grabs a plastic cup from a rack. She goes to the soda fountain and gets herself a drink.
INT. RESTAURANT -- DAY
Alaina sits alone at a table. She's eating. She stares out the window. In a WS, she looks small and isolated.
ALAINA (V.O.)
So the world is mine. Everybody dreams about that, but ya know, I thought it would make me happier. So much of life is about accumulating things to make our lives easier and more comfortable. I wonder how often we end up drowning in the things we own -- rather than being saved by them.
She looks down at the plastic cup. It's one of those cheap "free" cups with a movie logo emblazoned on it. She smirks at the cup and what it symbollizes.
ALAINA (V.O.)
I mean, I probably waste more time fixing computer bugs than I save by using a computer. I guess everything material is a moot point now. Unless there's someone else out there like me.
INT. MOVIE THEATRE. UPSTAIRS BOOTH -- DAY
Alaina walks through the booth. She pauses at each projector and reads the movie title. She finally sees one she likes, and tries to thread the film through the projector.
She hears a noise at the far end of the booth. Cautiously, she goes toward the noise. For the first time since the world changed, Alaina is afraid. She doesn't know what's in here. She doesn't know the rules of this new place.
Slowly, ever slowly, she checks out the booth. There's no sign of anybody else. Relieved, she goes back to the projector she was looking at. She fiddles with it for a while, threading the film through where it looks like it should go, then throws a switch to turn it on.
The film starts moving, then begins bunching up in one of the mechanisms. Alaina tries to pull the film out, but it's getting worse, and fast. She turns off the machine and begins un-bunching the celluloid, shaking her head.
She finally has it fixed, and starts it up again. She's smiling.
INT. MOVIE THEATRE. AUDITORIUM
Onscreen, the film starts, sputters, burns, and melts.
INT. MOVIE THEATRE. UPSTAIRS BOOTH
Alaina loses her smile.
INT. MOVIE THEATRE. AUDITORIUM -- LATER
Alaina munches popcorn in the completely empty theater. A movie flickers on her face and in her eyes. She looks happy. Suddenly, she senses movement behind her and jerks her head around. She stands up. There's no one there.
ALAINA (V.O.)
I'm having to start over. There's just static on the television, no radio, no movies, and no one to run anything. Every physical thing I see is my property now, but whatever I want -- whether it's a steak or a new computer system or a trip to somewhere I've never been -- there's no one to show me how it's done. I've gotta figure it out on my own.
EXT. ROAD -- DAY
Alaina drives along a road. Smoke starts pouring out of the engine, and she struggles to keep the car going. She can't. She pulls over, gets out, and opens the hood.
She fans away the smoke and looks at the engine. She doesn't know what she's doing, so she closes the hood, grabs her backpack, and walks thirty feet to another car, which is parked haphazardly in the road. She gets in the new car, starts the engine, and drives off, a little proud of herself.
INT. OFFICE. LOBBY -- DAY
Alaina wanders through a nice-looking office.
ALAINA (V.O.)
This is where I used to work. When someone would ask me who I am, describing this place was the first thing I would do. It's so important, apparently, the thing you do -- the thing that pays the gas bill. But what if -- at the core of it -- your job doesn't make you happy? I mean, I know jobs aren't supposed to make you happy, but now that things have changed, I'm never gonna fill out paperwork, or call a vendor, or kiss some client's ass again. Now that the world has gone away, there's no point. Come to think of it, what was the point when things were normal? We're adding numbers together, or selling soap, or entertaining them while their time just slips away. Half the jobs out there aren't even doing anything. I mean, what purpose did a caveman have for a systems integration manager? None. It's not like we were curing cancer here. We're wasting our lives, and wasting the lives of everybody else by not rejecting what humanity has become.
INT. SUPERMARKET. FREEZER AISLE -- DAY
Alaina pushes a grocery cart down an aisle. The lights are still on and the freezers are still cold.
ALAINA (V.O.)
Cancer. Man, wouldn't that be hilarious. The world disappears, leaving only me, and I develop a disease that couldn't have been cured even if there was a doctor here to treat me.
INT. SUPERMARKET. VITAMIN AISLE -- DAY
Alaina looks at the vitamins.
ALAINA (V.O.)
So now I'm faced with some new dilemmas. Do I need vitamins? Should I eat low-fat meals? Do I even need clothes? What's the point? Okay, so maybe I'll wear clothes no matter what. But what is really going on here? Do the normal laws of physics still apply? Do I still have seventy years to live?
EXT. ROOFTOP OF HOUSE -- DAY
Alaina walks along the high rooftop of a suburban home. She looks out across the horizon, watching the city in the distance.
ALAINA (V.O.)
What the hell am I gonna do for seventy years without talking to another human being? What if my eyes go bad, and I'm the last person alive, but I starve to death because I can't find the fucking store? Oh man, how long will the power stay on? I mean, I can't run a power plant. It's got to burn itself out sometime, right?
INT. CAR -- DAY
Alaina drives, drinking in the world around her. Over the course of her monologue, her face changes from despair to great happiness.
ALAINA (V.O.)
Okay, okay, I've gotta think positive. I'm gonna give myself an ulcer if I think about bad stuff all the time. Then I'd have to drink milk to coat it, and there can't be any unspoiled milk left now, so I'd have to learn how to milk a cow, and...that's just too much for me to worry about. Okay, think positive. The world is mine. So why am I driving this piece of crap car?
EXT. SPORTSCAR -- DAY
Alaina takes off in a beautiful new sportscar.
INT. SPORTSCAR -- DAY
ALAINA (V.O.)
And where is God in all this? I've been a devout believer, but I've also had long periods as a skeptic. But I want there to be a God. I want to know Him and have Him know me. I want to share that amazing, unknowable thing. So please answer me, God. Please help me make sense of all this. I'm stupid and weak and -- ooh! A shopping mall.
INT. SHOPPING MALL -- DAY
Alaina wanders through an empty shopping mall, window-shopping.
ALAINA (V.O.)
So what else? I can do whatever I want. I can go shopping naked and take everything I need. I've got the time I always wanted to read every book I wish I had before.
EXT. SOCCER FIELD -- DAY
Alaina slowly walks through a recreational park. She absent-mindedly dribbles a soccer ball with her feet.
ALAINA (V.O.)
I never have to hear another politician's lies again. I don't have to fear nuclear war. I don't have to be afraid in the city at night. I don't need to worry about bills or taxes or money ever again. I've got nothing to worry about, right?
Alaina sets the ball in front of a soccer goal, as if she were in a shootout with the goalie. She runs up the the ball, arching her leg back to kick and --
CUT TO BLACK.
ALAINA (V.O.)
The future is mine.
EXT. POOL -- DAY
Close up on JULIE, 25.
JULIE
Oh my God, she's not coming up!
PULL BACK TO REVEAL: The pool party from the first scene. Everyone is where they were when we last saw them. They all drop what they're doing and race towards Alaina, who is still underwater at the bottom of the pool.
VOICES
Alaina! Somebody get her up!
Several people dive into the water, scrambling to bring Alaina back to the surface.
VOICES
Call 911! Oh God! Oh God!
PAN UP to the sky. We hear the faint sound of sirens approaching.
VOICES (O.S.)
She's not breathing. Does anyone know CPR? Help! Help us! Alaina!
FADE TO BLACK.
ALAINA (V.O.)
The future is mine.
The sirens are getting closer.

Swimming the Mississippi

John Irons writes:

Swim Lessons - Ten Lessons for Making Any Dream Come True - by Nick Irons

Swim the Mississippi? Why would anyone do that? Nick Irons did. He swam six hours a day, six days a week, for four months. Good thing. What he discovered along the way is the rock-solid plan the rest of us can use to make our biggest dreams come true.

Irons’ dream was to raise awareness and money to find a cure for multiple sclerosis, the disease his father and hundreds of thousands of other people live with every day. And he did. His historic 1,550-mile swim down the mighty Mississippi? from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana—makes him the second person in seventy years to swim the length of North America’s longest waterway and the first to do it with the locks and dams of its “modern” form.

According to Irons, we all have at least one idea that just won’t let go. What’s your Mississippi? Have you always wanted to write that novel or take time off to travel with your kids? How would you like to live on a sail boat for a year, climb a mountain, or learn to ride a horse? Maybe you want to change careers. Whatever your dream, Swim Lessons is the ultimate guide to making it happen.

This is not your typical self-help book that takes an inspiring message and uses “success” stories to illustrate its various points. This is the real deal, someone who got out there, did what the rest of us dream of doing, then came back to show us the way. Irons is a first-rate storyteller, so Swim Lessons is loaded with irresistible details and drama that make the swim itself read like any good adventure. Each chapter then boils down a critical lesson, providing dozens of strategic ideas, activities, checklists, questions, and more to help readers launch their own adventure.

Far more than inspiration, Swim Lessons shows you how to take any idea? no matter how deeply personal, quirky, or outrageous? and make it happen. From getting started to hanging in there, you get fun, easy, step-by-step strategies and tips that will work for anybody. Perfect for dreamers of all ages.

Nick Irons and his story have been featured on CNN, Good Morning America, The Montel Williams Show as well as in magazines and newspapers nationwide, from The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, People, and many others. According to CNN National News Correspondent Gene Randall, “Nick Irons is a true American hero.”

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book is being donated to MS research.

Open system might plug up holes in the e-voting process

Mike Himowitz, The Baltimore Sun, writes:

WHILE ELECTION officials, lawmakers and critics in Maryland and other states squabble over the reliability of electronic voting systems, a small group of computer scientists and engineers has been developing one that might actually work.

The Open Voting Consortium is scheduled to demonstrate a prototype today in San Jose, Calif. You can try a version yourself on the Web at www.open votingconsortium.org.

Although it's far from a finished product, the system retains what's good about current electronic voting systems. It's voter-friendly, easier than older systems to administer, and accessible to blind voters without assistance.

It also addresses the concerns of today's critics. First, it uses open-source software that's available for public inspection - eliminating the secrecy that outrages critics of today's proprietary "black box" systems.

Second, the software is free and can run on a variety of computer platforms, which makes the system cheaper to acquire and maintain. Third, it creates a paper trail of printed ballots that can be counted by hand or machine in case of disputed elections - without compromising privacy for the blind.

Unfortunately, the system may come too late to prevent disasters in the next round of elections. To understand why, it takes a bit of history.

In response to the Florida fiasco of 2000, which left the presidential election in limbo and millions of voters disgusted with the system, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002. It provides $3.9 billion to help states replace lever-based voting machines and discredited punch-card ballots with electronic systems.

Although HAVA doesn't forbid scanned paper-ballot systems, which have worked reliably for years, it does require states to equip each poll with a voting terminal accessible to the blind without assistance. As a result, most states have chosen Direct Recording Electronic systems, or DREs, that use touch-screen computers to record votes and provide add-on audio equipment to guide blind voters.

Early on, election officials ignored critics - including many computer scientists - who warned that electronic systems were open to sabotage, tampering and vote-fixing - particularly without the safety of a paper record of each ballot.

Critics also complained that these systems use proprietary software from their vendors to tabulate and store votes - code that's not available to the public. In essence, the most critical part of the election - counting the votes - had been snatched from public view and stashed away in a "black box."

The response from election administrators and voting system vendors: "Trust us."

After a series of embarrassing glitches and exposures of security defects, some states, including California and Ohio, are considering requiring that electronic systems print voter-verified "receipts" that can be stored and used in recounts of disputed elections.

Legislators in Maryland, which bought a $56 million Diebold touch-screen system that two security consultants separately have criticized, are considering similar legislation, although it's unlikely to pass this year.

Advocates for the blind threaten lawsuits over the paper trail proposals, arguing that any system relying on paper verification discriminates against the visually impaired.

While these debates raged over the summer and fall, a group of computer scientists and civic activists who had been working on designs for electronic voting systems for years - mostly in California - formed the Open Voting Consortium to develop a system that's electronic, secure and blind-accessible.

Instead of printing a "receipt" that confirms a ballot cast electronically, it's based on the quaint notion that the best ballot is still a paper ballot. "We didn't see any reason to reinvent the wheel," said Fred McLain, the project's lead software developer.

In the consortium's system, the voting terminal can be a touch screen like today's electronic touch-screens, with the same type of audio accessories for blind voters. But the terminal's main job, once the voter is finished, is to print a paper ballot that identifies the voter's choices - along with a bar code that records the information in computer-readable form.

Once the voter is satisfied, he puts the ballot into a locked box. To verify their ballots, blind voters can hide their printed choices in a security folder and run the bar code under a verifying scanner, which reads back their votes through headphones - eliminating the paper ballot's privacy concerns.

When the polls close, the ballots are scanned on a separate tabulating system. Election judges can compare the scanned totals with those stored in the voting terminals to see if there are any discrepancies. The original ballots are still available to settle disputes - and unlike scanned paper ballots in older systems, the voter's choices are always clearly marked.

"That is a profound difference," said Alan Dechert, the consortium's president. "With a DRE, when you say 'Cast my ballot,' the vote exists in a database. In this system, it says, 'Print my ballot' - the authentic vote is on paper."

Like the "receipt" system, the Open Voting Consortium's plan would add a printer to the mix -- a clunky piece of equipment most election administrators would like to avoid. It also adds an optical scanner, yet another potential source of problems. But the setup adds a measure of security, too - hackers would have to compromise two separate computer systems without being detected to rig an election.

The other major difference in the Open Voting system is the nature of the software that counts the votes. Open-source software is developed by a group of programmers who publish their code and invite others to attack it or offer suggestions for improvements.

Traditional software companies hate open-source software because no one owns it or collects royalties for it. But the process works. The Linux operating system, now used on millions of servers around the world, is a premier example of open source software. Computer experts say Linux is far more secure than Microsoft Windows - largely because friendly hackers have examined it closely and suggested improvements that help keep intruders out.

Dechert said the Open Voting Consortium will spend the coming months demonstrating its system to election administrators around the country.

It's an uphill battle, because so many - like those in Maryland - have committed millions to proprietary systems and have little inclination to admit a mistake. Likewise, vendors of electronic systems have invested heavily in lobbyists, marketing teams and political contributions to keep their share of the e-voting billions.

But all would do well to take a look. It just might work.

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun

Eight bodies pulled from rubble of tavern

Don Babwin, Associated Press, reports:

Searchers with shovels and buckets pulled eight bodies Wednesday from the rubble of a tavern where residents had gathered to seek shelter from a twister that flattened the century-old building.

Mayor Fred Esmond said several people from a nearby trailer park had congregated in the basement of the Milestone Tap. Nine people were removed alive from the ruins of the country-western-themed watering hole.

"They heard it on the radio. Some of them went to the tavern for safety, and it just so happened ... ," Esmond said, his voice trailing off.

LaSalle County Coroner Jody Bernard said the dead, who were found in various locations of the bar, ranged in age from 18 to 81 and were all from the Utica area. The two-story building's crumbling sandstone foundation slowed rescuers' efforts as they gingerly dug through the sandy rubble. Rescue workers used listening devices to comb through the building's remains.

Authorities were not aware of anyone else missing.

Bernard identified the dead as Larry Ventrice, 49; Wayne Ball, 63; Marian Ventrice, 50; Beverly "Bev" Wood, 67; Helen Menke, 81; Carol Shultheis, 40; Mike Miller, 18; and Jay Vezain, 47.

The tornado that devastated Utica -- turning homes into piles of brick and splintered wood -- was part of a storm system that smashed through north-central Illinois Tuesday night.

More than 10 people were taken to hospitals and at least six remained there Wednesday afternoon, authorities in Utica said.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who toured Utica Wednesday, declared LaSalle, Putnam, Kankakee and Will counties state disaster areas before leaving for trips to Joliet and Granville, two other towns hit by the storm. Federal Emergency Management Agency officials planned to visit Thursday to see if the areas met the criteria for federal disaster relief.

"Our prayers are with everyone in this community, particularly those who lost their lives," Blagojevich said. He praised the rescuers, saying Illinoisans should "take inspiration from the heroes who are here."

In Joliet, a city southwest of Chicago, the storm damaged a dozen homes in a historic district and collapsed a drug store roof. The storm also damaged about 60 homes and a bank in Granville, officials said.

But Utica was hardest hit. The tornado swept through the center of the small town, a popular stop for people on their way to nearby Starved Rock State Park. The town is located about 90 miles southwest of Chicago.

Mayor Fred Esmond knew many of the people who died in the Milestone. The Ventrices ran the tavern and lived above it, while Vezain worked for the grain elevator across the street from the tavern. Ball was a retired railroad worker and Shultheis, his daughter, worked at another restaurant in town. He said Ball, Wood and Menke, who was retired, all lived in a trailer park near the tavern.

In Utica, other buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged. Bill Burke, director of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, had no estimate of the damage but expected it to be in the millions of dollars.

A metal silo at the grain elevator was toppled, and a chunk of it was wrapped around a stop sign. A wall of bricks from a downtown bar rained down on the car parked next to the building, and a string of Christmas lights flapped in the breeze after the huge picture window they were shining in was blown out.

On houses that officials had checked for injuries, marks of "OK" were spray painted in orange and pink. One home, with its back wall torn off, resembled a child's dollhouse -- the china cabinet was still standing with dishes inside, and magnets remained on the refrigerator.

Utica residents said the tornado arrived within seconds. John Devore, 44, rushed his family into the basement and looked outside about 15 seconds later.

"It was like my brain wasn't comprehending what my eyes were seeing. I said, 'Well, it looks like the car's OK,' and then a split second later, 'Wait a minute, I'm not supposed to be able to see my car. Where the hell's my garage?"'

Jeri Alonzo, 60, said just as she heard the town's sirens sound, her hearing diminished and her nose blocked up because of the barometric pressure drop.

"I knew when my hearing went and I started to get a little dizzy (I had to get to the basement)" she said. "I heard a cracking blowout sound. That was all my windows."

Alonzo said the tornado jumped across town "like checkers." A 50-foot tree in her front yard was toppled, but across the street a sign reading "Support Our Troops" remained upright.

Associated Press writer Maura Kelly contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

EPA Approved ICBMs

James Dunnigan writes:

In order to comply with EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulations, and at a cost of about $5.2 million per ICBM, the rocket motors on 500 Minuteman III missiles will be replaced with new ones. These rockets will emit less toxic chemicals when used. But the new, environmentally correct rockets will be heavier than the old ones, and will thus  have a shorter range than the original motors. The actual range of the  Minuteman III  has been classified, but is thought to be nearly 10,000 kilometers, based on where the missiles are stationed and where the original Russian targets were.  Thus, if the Minuteman III ICBMs have to be used in some future nuclear war, their rocket motors will not pollute the atmosphere. EPA regulations do not apply in foreign countries, so no changes are being made to reduce the harmful environmental effects of the nuclear warheads.

The air force has been replacing the decades old solid fuel rockets of its Minuteman III missiles for several years. Actually, a test of a 33 year old Minuteman I rocket motor showed that the motor (actually, a long tube full of slow burning explosives) still performed according to specification. But the rocket motors do degrade with age. The last of the Minuteman III missiles will receive their new motors by 2008.  The Minuteman III guidance systems and control electronics, in the silo and launch center, are also being upgraded. The Minuteman III entered service in 1968, the Minuteman I did so in 1962, as the first solid fueled ICBM. 

Finally, to comply with disarmament agreements, the Minuteman third stage, that contains three 440 pound nuclear weapons, will be replaced with a warhead containing one 600 pound nuclear weapon. The Minuteman III is 70 feet long, 5.5 feet in diameter and weighs 32 tons.

To help pay for the Minuteman III upgrade program, the more recent Peacekeeper (which  entered service in 1986, as the ultimate Cold War era ICBM) will be retired. Only 23 Peacekeepers are still in service. The Peacekeeper is a four stage missile that carries ten warheads. The Peacekeeper is  71 feet long, 7.7 feet in diameter and weighs 88 tons. It had the same range as the Minuteman III, but greater accuracy. The refurbished Minuteman IIIs will have the same accuracy as the Peacekeeper. Because the Peacekeeper came into use just as the Cold War unexpectedly ended, only fifty were ever put into service. The upgraded Minuteman III is expected to remain in service until 2020, at which point it will be replaced by a new missile design. Current disarmament treaties have the United States reducing nuclear warheads getting below 2,200 in the next few years.

April 18, 2004

Cop wins doughnut-eating contest

New York Daily News reports:

ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill. - A patrolman from Wisconsin left his opponents in a cloud of powdered sugar dust by downing 9-1/2 doughnuts in three minutes to win a doughnut-eating contest for police officers in suburban Chicago.

Terry O'Brien of the Town of Geneva Police Department in Lake Geneva, Wis., said he was destined to win Wednesday's contest because law enforcement runs in his family.

"Actually, it was my father, who's deceased," O'Brien said. "He was a Chicago cop, a lifer. Today is his birthday."

For the second year in a row, the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association held the contest at its annual conference. The Dunkin' Donuts World Cop Donut Eating Championship attracted 40 contestants from the U.S. and Canada.

Master of Ceremonies Ed Nowicki said he was amazed by what it took to win this year.

"I thought they'd do seven (doughnuts), maybe they'd do eight," Nowicki said. "I couldn't believe 10!"

HIV Scare Shuts Down Porn Studios

Dr. Koop reports:

A number of studios that produce pornographic movies have suspended filming for at least 60 days after revelations that two stars tested positive for the AIDS-causing HIV virus, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Actor Darren James and actress Lara Roxx, who worked together in at least one movie, both tested positive this week, the Times said. Several studios -- including the largest one, Vivid -- announced the shutdown, saying actors who worked with either of the pair needed time to get tested.

Since the positive tests, the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation, an industry-sponsored health center, has identified 45 actors and actresses who have worked with either actor, and is urging them to be tested, the newspaper reported.

Copyright © 2004 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

Attogram Mass Detection

A small gold dot rests on a silicon cantilever. The dot is a test mass for studying how the cantilever can be used to measure the masses of tiny particles, including viruses, with attogram precision. (Image credit: Physics News Update 673 #2) (via BoingBoing)

Phil Schewe, James Riordon, and Ben Stein, Physics News Update 673 #2, write:

Attogram mass detection has been achieved by Harold Craighead and his colleagues at Cornell, with prospects of exquisite detection of very tiny chemical and biological species, possibly with arrays of detectors. With their lithographically fabricated nanoelectromechanical (NEMS) device, the Cornell researchers can measure the mass of a particle with a sensitivity of 10-18 grams, far exceeding the precision of a comparable device with femtogram (10-15 g) sensitivity reported last year (Update 634-2). To get any better measurement of mass you would have to vaporize the particle and shoot its constituent molecules through a mass spectrometer.

At Cornell, mass measurement works this way: when the minuscule particle is absorbed onto a tiny sliver of silicon it alters the sliver's resonant oscillation (see figure). The oscillation in turn is monitored by reflecting laser light off the cantilever. It's as if a particle with a mass of a billionth of a billionth of a gram stepped onto a diving board whose springiness was observed by reflected light.

So far Craighead's group has weighed small gold dots and tiny coatings of molecules on the dots, but the goal is to detect and identify viruses. (Previously the same group detected the immunospecific binding of a single bacterium using the oscillating-cantilever method. They did this by coating their with a specific antibody and therefore could bind and detect the added mass only of the corresponding antigen.)

The mass sensitivity with the present cantilever (4 microns long, 500 nm wide, and at room temperature) is expected to be 0.39 attogram and will only get better as the size of the cantilever is reduced further, extending the sensitivity well into the zeptogram (10-21 g) range. (Ilic et al., Journal of Applied Physics, upcoming article; also, see lab website. For an analysis of the ultimate limits of cantilever sensing of mass, see Ekinci et al., Journal of Applied Physics, 1 March 2004.)

5-Year-Old Girl Survives 10 Days Alone, After Her Mother's Fatal Crash

Darrell Smith, Jennifer Larson and Lois Gormley, The Desert Sun, report:

MORENO VALLEY (CA) -- She survived on sport drinks, dried noodles and a resilience that family, friends and even doctors are struggling to believe.

"All I know is that it was a miracle for my little niece to survive down there by herself," Ruby Bustamante’s uncle Johnny Marin said Wednesday.

"It felt pretty good knowing that God was looking over her, that he was over her, protecting her."

Little 5-year-old Ruby Bustamante lingered for 10 days in the wreckage of a crash that killed her mother.

Caltrans road crews who saw something moving in the bottom of the ravine where the wreckage lay, found her tired, hungry, dehydrated, but alive. She continued to recover Wednesday at a Moreno Valley hospital.

"Ruby is doing extraordinarily well," said Webster Wong, chief of pediatrics at Riverside County Regional Medical Center. "It’s a devastating loss, but a joyous recovery."

Outraged family members, wrestling with joy and tragedy, said more should have been done to save the life of Ruby’s mother.

They laid the death of Norma Bustamante, 26, of Indio at the feet of the Indio Police Department in an emotional news conference outside the medical center.

Relatives accused Indio police of foot-dragging and dismissing the family’s pleas to search roadways for the missing pair.

Those delays cost Bustamante her life, they said.

"This is an outrage," said Rose Lopez, Bustamante’s aunt and family spokesman.

"There’s no excuse for a mother to be left out to die and a daughter to have to go through such a horrific ordeal."

Minutes later, the news conference was abruptly and angrily halted by Bustamante’s grandfather Bill Cooley, who later scuffled with and shouted at news camera crews who attempted to follow the family back into the hospital.

Later, Indio police officials said they understood the family’s grief, but said the department took the reports of the missing pair seriously.

"I understand the family is outraged and lashing out," said Indio Police Cmdr. Mark Miller. "They’re grieving and that’s understandable. The department holds no animosity toward them.

"We did consider it a serious matter and we were looking for them," he continued. "Unfortunately, we had no specific location to search."

Miller said the department followed up on every lead and followed all standard procedures in investigating the Bustamantes’ disappearance.

"It’s a terrible tragedy," Miller said. "It’s not the way we wanted this to end."

Miller said the first reports from family members came April 5, information that was put into a national missing persons database. Indio, Coachella Valley and Riverside County authorities were also advised.

Indio officials said they later learned the Banning CHP office had received a call April 4 at 8:32 a.m. of a possible wreck involving a similar green vehicle that was seen going over the side of an embankment.

Couldn’t find it

CHP officers and Riverside County fire crews responded but were unable to locate the green Ford Taurus.

Bustamante was reported missing the following afternoon.

"Had we been aware of that at the time, we certainly would have searched in that area," Miller said.

No firm leads steered authorities to the car and the missing pair.

"There is nothing we could have done differently," said Indio Police Chief Brad Ramos.

According to Johnny Marin, Bustamante had been driving to visit her boyfriend in prison in Norwalk on the day she disappeared.

‘What happened to her?’

"But she never made it there. Her boyfriend was calling my mom, crying, ‘What happened to her?’ " he said. "And everybody already knew something had to have happened to her."

Richard Ortiz, a longtime friend and neighbor first met Bustamante when she was a shy little girl in his third-grade class in Desert Hot Springs.

Ortiz remembered calling Bustamante on her cell phone the day she was reported missing.

She told him to call her back in three hours.

"I called her back and it was the machine, the machine, the machine," he said.

He never received another phone call from her.

Results of an autopsy released Wednesday just hours after the chaotic scene outside the hospital, however, showed little could have been done to save Norma Bustamante.

She suffered multiple blunt force trauma, Riverside County medical examiners said. Her battered body sustained multiple lacerations of the liver and rib fractures in the wreck.

"The autopsy… revealed that Ms. Bustamante’s death likely occurred within minutes of the accident," read a Riverside County Sheriff’s statement.

Initial reports Tuesday said Bustamante had died two days before Ruby’s discovery.

The fact her mother died so quickly after the crash makes it even more remarkable that little Ruby survived.

For every bit of 10 days, she stayed and waited.

"It’s really quite amazing," said Dr. Harry Weil, director of the Palm Springs-based Institute of Critical Care Medicine.

"There was some indication that there was some food and drink available, but it’s quite extraordinary she could survive at the age of five without substantial nourishment."

Obscured by trees

Caltrans road crews found Ruby by her mother’s 1996 Ford Taurus on Tuesday. The car was obscured by trees at the bottom of a ravine in the canyon-marked mountainous terrain of the Badlands -- the desolate stretch along winding Highway 60 from Beaumont to Moreno Valley.

Investigators on Wednesday met with Bustamante family members at the spot where the car plunged off the roadway sometime April 4.

Later, California Highway Patrol officials said investigating the wreck would take two to three weeks.

Hit center divider

They were able to surmise this much on Wednesday: Norma Bustamante’s car crashed into the center divider on westbound 60 just east of Gilman Springs Road on the road out of Beaumont.

The car careened across the roadway, then plunged more than 150 feet down the ravine and overturned before coming to rest under a tree.

The hilly, winding roadway is a dangerous one.

In the past five years, the California Highway Patrol has logged 472 traffic accidents. Six of those were fatal and happened on the stretch of Highway 60 bounded by Interstate 10 and Gilman Springs Road, said officer Chris Blondon. He is a CHP spokesman from the patrol’s Beaumont office.

As a crowd of reporters gathered in front of the medical center Wednesday afternoon -- its entrance blocked by long strings of yellow tape -- Wong spoke of a young girl in "miraculous shape."

Ruby has very minor injuries, cuts, scrapes, bruises, he said.

She was sitting up in bed. And she wanted her ice cream.

"That’s good news in pediatrics," Wong said.

Ruby was smiling, watching TV and was happy to be surrounded by family, he said.

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