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Solar Flare

NASA reports:

A massive solar flare erupted from the surface of the Sun at 9:51 UTC on October 28, 2003. The solar flare persisted for more than an hour, peaking at 11:10 UTC. Associated with the flare was an ejection of a billion tons or more of gas from the Sun’s tenuous outer atmosphere, or corona. Both the flare and the coronal mass ejection accelerated electrically charged particles to very high energies and hurled them at near the speed of light directly toward the Earth. It takes light roughly 8 minutes to travel from the Sun to Earth, and these particles made the trip in less than an hour. NOAA is predicting that the coronal mass ejection will hit the Earth’s magnetosphere sometime early tomorrow (Oct. 29), probably at or before 12 noon UTC.

The images above show the event from the perspective of three different satellite sensors. The top image was acquired by the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO), aboard NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite. In the center of the image is an occultation disc, which allows the sensor to focus on the scattering of light from the Sun’s surface off the free electrons in the Sun’s corona. This light appears as the orange halo seemingly radiating outward from the Sun. (The white circle on the occultation disc shows the actual size and location of the solar disc). Note the bright white features extending from beneath and to the left of the Sun. These are today’s coronal mass ejections, which appear to be heading directly toward the Earth.

The bottom left image shows the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) view of the Sun’s visible surface. The dark patches are sunspots, which are a tepid 4,000 Kelvin—much cooler than the Sun’s typical surface temperature of 6,000 Kelvin. The bottom right scene shows the view from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT). This sensor shows the light from a single ionized species of iron that is formed at about 1.5 million Kelvin high in the Sun’s corona. Today’s solar flare appears as the bright green-white feature toward the bottom left of the solar disc.

To put this event in perspective, NOAA predicts the impacts of the coronal mass ejection on the Earth’s magnetosphere will be a “4” (severe) on a scale of 1 to 5. The flare is the third largest ever recorded in the 30 years since NOAA began observing soft X-ray emissions from the Sun. Today’s flare is listed as an X17.2, with an X20 being the most intense flare ever observed in that time. People living in Quebec, Canada, may recall that in March 1989 an X15 solar storm was strong enough to knock out the region’s power grid.

Officials say it is possible that people in the Southern Hemisphere will see aurorae at much lower latitudes than usual on Oct. 29, when the coronal mass ejection reaches Earth. It is also possible that people could experience problems using telecommunications devices, such as satellite phones and pagers. In May 1998, for example, the commercial Galaxy IV satellite was damaged by a solar storm, knocking out its ability to support telecommunications.

For more images from the SOHO mission, please see http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2003_10_28/.

Images courtesy Solar & Heliospheric Observatory

The Perfect Fire

Mike Davis writes:

Sunday morning in San Diego. The sun is an eerie orange orb, like the eye of a hideous jack-o-lantern. The fire on the flank of Otay Mountain, which straddles the Mexican border, generates a huge whitish-grey mushroom plume. It is a rather sublime sight, like Vesuvius in eruption. Meanwhile the black sky rains ash from incinerated national forests and dream homes.

It may be the fire of the century in Southern California. By brunch on Sunday eight separate fires were raging out of control, and the two largest had merged into a single forty-mile-long red wall. The megalopolis's emergency resources have been stretched to the breaking point and California's National Guard reinforcements are 10,000 miles away in Iraq. Panic is creeping into the on-the-spot television reports from scores of chaotic fire scenes.

Fourteen deaths have already been reported in San Bernardino and San Diego counties, and nearly 1000 homes have been destroyed. More than 100,000 suburbanites have been evacuated, triple as many as during the great Arizona fire of 2002 or the Canberra (Australia) holocaust last January. Tens of thousands of others have their cars packed with family pets and mementos. We're all waiting to flee. There is no containment, and infernal fire weather is predicted to last through Tuesday.

It is, of course, the right time of the year for the end of the world.

Just before Halloween, the pressure differential between the Colorado Plateau and Southern California begins to generate the infamous Santa Ana winds. A spark in their path becomes a blowtorch.

Exactly a decade ago, between Oct. 26 and Nov. 7, firestorms fanned by Santa Anas destroyed more than a thousand homes in Pasadena, Malibu, and Laguna Beach. In the last century, nearly half the great Southern California fires have occurred in October.

This time climate, ecology, and stupid urbanization have conspired to create the ingredients for one of the most perfect firestorms in history. Experts have seen it coming for months.

First of all, there is an extraordinary supply of perfectly cured, tinder-dry fuel. The weather year, 2001-02, was the driest in the history of Southern California. Here in San Diego we had only 3 inches of rain. (The average is about 11 inches). Then last winter it rained just hard enough to sprout dense thickets of new underbrush (a.k.a. fire starter), all of which have now been desiccated for months.

Meanwhile in the local mountains, an epic drought, which may be an expression of global warming, opened the way to a bark beetle infestation which has already killed or is killing 90% of Southern California's pine forests. Last month, scientists grimly told members of Congress at a special hearing at Lake Arrowhead that "it is too late to save the San Bernardino National Forest." Arrowhead and other famous mountain resorts, they predicted, would soon "look like any treeless suburb of Los Angeles."

These dead forests represent an almost apocalyptic hazard to more than 100,000 mountain and foothill residents, many of whom depend on a single, narrow road for their fire escape. Earlier this year, San Bernardino county officials, despairing of the ability to evacuate all their mountain hamlets by highway, proposed a bizarre last-ditch plan to huddle residents on boats in the middle of Arrowhead and Big Bear lakes.

Now the San Bernardinos are an inferno, along with tens of thousand acres of chaparral-covered hillsides in neighboring counties. As always during Halloween fire seasons, there is hysteria about arson. Invisible hands may have purposely ignited several of the current firestorms. Indeed, in Santa Ana weather like this, one maniac on a motorcycle with a cigarette lighter can burn down half the world.

This is a specter against which grand inquisitors and wars against terrorism are powerless to protect us. Moreover, many fire scientists dismiss "ignition" -- whether natural, accidental, or deliberate -- as a relatively trivial factor in their equations. They study wildfire as an inevitable result of the accumulation of fuel mass. Given fuel, "fire happens."

The best preventive measure, of course, is to return to the native-Californian practice of regular, small-scale burning of old brush and chaparral. This is now textbook policy, but the suburbanization of the fire terrain makes it almost impossible to implement it on any adequate scale. Homeowners despise the temporary pollution of "controlled burns" and local officials fear the legal consequences of escaped fires.

As a result, huge plantations of old, highly flammable brush accumulate along the peripheries and in the interstices of new, sprawled-out suburbs. Since the devastating 1993 fires, tens of thousands of new homes have pushed their way into the furthest recesses of Southern California's coastal and inland fire-belts. Each new homeowner, moreover, expects heroic levels of protection from underfunded county and state fire agencies.

Fire, as a result, is politically ironic. Right now, as I watch San Diego's wealthiest new suburb, Scripps Ranch, in flames, I recall the Schwarzenegger fund-raising parties hosted there a few weeks ago. This was an epicenter of the recent recall and gilded voices roared to the skies against the oppression of an out-of-control public sector. Now Arnold's wealthy supporters are screaming for fire engines, and "big government" is the only thing standing between their $3 million homes and the ash pile.

Halloween fires, of course, burn shacks as well as mansions, but Republicans tend to disproportionately concentrate themselves in the wrong altitudes and ecologies. Indeed it is striking to what extent the current fire map (Rancho Cucamonga, north Fontana, La Verne, Simi Valley, Vista, Ramona, Eucalyptus Hills, Scripps Ranch, and so on) recapitulates geographic patterns of heaviest voter support for the recall.

The fires also cruelly illuminate the new governor's essential dilemma: how to service simultaneous middle-class demands for reduced spending and more public services. The white-flight gated suburbs insist on impossible standards of fire protection, but refuse to pay either higher insurance premiums (fire insurance in California is "cross-subsidized" by all homeowners) or higher property taxes. Even a Hollywood superhero will have difficulty squaring that circle.

Mike Davis is the author of City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, and most recently, Dead Cities: and Other Tales

. Copyright C2003 Mike Davis

At least 14 killed in California wildfires

Ventura County firefighters watch a twister of flame rise from a back fire in Simi Valley, California.

CNN reports:

(CNN) -- Voracious wildfires in Southern California -- the worst in a decade -- have killed 14 people, and one man who lost his home in Simi Valley lamented, "There is nothing left."

At least 10 fires had burned more than 280,000 acres and destroyed at least 600 homes by Sunday night.

Fires blazed as far north as Simi Valley in Ventura County, east to San Bernardino County and south to San Diego County. San Diego officials said about 30 homes were burned at Scripps Ranch on Sunday night, and 150 burned in the area earlier.

Smoke and rising flames hampered air and highway travel in the area. Flames from the Cedar fire near the upscale Ramona community came within a quarter-mile of the Federal Aviation Administration's radar facility at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station near San Diego.

Air traffic controllers transferred their responsibilities to the L.A. Center in Palmdale, but the switch delayed air travel into and out of several Southern California airports, including Los Angeles International and San Diego International. (Full story)

"Our hearts go out to those who have lost their homes," San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy told reporters. "This fire is so overwhelming, so devastating."

San Diego schools will be closed Monday, and "only the most essential services" will be operating. Murphy asked residents to conserve water to provide more for firefighters.

After a request by the mayor, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced that the Chargers-Dolphins game scheduled for Monday night would be moved from San Diego to Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona.

Among the 14 fatalities were three people who died Saturday in San Bernardino, and 11 people who perished Sunday in San Diego County, including a couple trying to escape the fire in their car.

Some residents of San Antonio Heights, northeast of Claremont, and nearby Alta Loma -- both west of San Bernardino -- were being allowed to return to their homes, authorities said Sunday night.

Firefighters were battling winds that helped spread the flames, some of which were shooting 70 feet in the air.

Santa Ana winds were blowing at 20 to 30 mph, with gusts up to 45 mph, CNN meteorologist Orelon Sidney said. She predicted no letup in weather conditions until Tuesday.

Two fires, near Camp Pendleton in San Diego County and in Ventura County, were more than 50 percent contained, authorities said.

Several fires were deliberately set, authorities said.

In Ventura County, flames came within about a quarter-mile of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum before it was extinguished, said Police Sgt. Paul Fitzpatrick. However, another major fire continued to burn in the northeast corner of the county, he said.

At San Bernardino, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino National Forest said two fires that had merged were still a major threat after burning in San Antonio Heights and Claremont.

The Grand Prix fire had grown to 52,000 acres, destroying 60 homes, and the Old fire had grown by Sunday night to 24,000 acres and had burned 300 homes, including 25 in Crestline.

Some residents had only 15 minutes to evacuate.

A San Bernardino woman cried as she looked at the charred rubble of her home.

"[We've lost] our letters, our annuals and pictures when we were babies. It's not about the value of a washer or a Mustang. It's just about things meaning something because they are part of your life," she told CNN.

Murphy, the San Diego mayor, said he surveyed the fire and fire damage by helicopter Sunday.

"The fire line is still extensive. The fire damage is devastating. It breaks your heart to see what this fire has done to families in San Diego."

San Diego's fire chief said the fire has destroyed at least 25,000 acres within the city limits. Pets and farm animals that owners couldn't keep were being housed at the Delmar Fairgrounds and polo grounds.

Earlier Sunday, California Gov. Gray Davis signed requests for federal emergency declarations for Los Angeles and San Diego counties, paving the way for financial aid to help residents and businesses rebuild.

Late Saturday, Davis signed declarations for San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

Copyright 2003 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

Lightning strikes Gibson's Christ

CNN reports:

ROME, Italy -- Actor Jim Caviezel, who plays the son of God in Mel Gibson's controversial film "The Passion of Christ" has been struck by lightning during shooting.

Caviezel was uninjured, but a producer described how he saw smoke coming from the actor's ear.

An assistant director on the film, Jan Michelini, was also hit -- for the second time in a few months.

The first time, a lightning fork struck his umbrella during filming on top of a hill near Matera in Italy, causing light burns to the tips of his fingers, VLife, a supplement to Variety publications said in its October issue.

A few months later the second strike happened, a few hours from Rome.

Michelini was again carrying an umbrella, and standing next to Caviezel on top of a hill, the magazine said.

Both were hit, with the main bolt striking Caviezel while one of its forks hit Michelini's umbrella. Neither were hurt.

The film, which is spoken in Latin and Aramaic, has come in for criticism from some religious leaders. It portrays the last hours of Christ, but some Jewish and Roman Catholic groups are concerned the film will fuel anti-Semitism.

Final Concorde Flight Lands at Heathrow

Jill Lawless, Associated Press, Writes:

LONDON –– Three Concordes swooped into Heathrow Airport Friday, joining in a spectacular finale to the era of luxury supersonic jet travel.

The last regular passenger flight from New York arrived with every seat filled, a feat that had become increasingly rare for a plane that was a technological marvel but a commercial flop.

Flight 002 landed just past 4 p.m., minutes after two other British Airways Concordes. One flew from Edinburgh, Scotland, carrying winners of a competition, and the other had taken off from Heathrow an hour and a half earlier and carried invited guests on a loop over the Bay of Biscay.

Thousands of enthusiasts gathered at Heathrow to watch the landings, but not everyone loved the Concorde. Over the years, many criticized its enormous roar and almost everyone found its fares of $9,000 and up for a trans-Atlantic round-trip too high.

Spectator Julia Zuk, 50, who lives near the airport, said she enjoyed her daily glimpses of the elegant jet and hadn't minded the noise.

"It's like wearing stilettos," she said. "They hurt your feet, but you know they look a lot sexier than ordinary shoes."

BA and Air France, the only carriers to fly the Concorde, announced in April that they would retire the jets, citing ballooning costs and dwindling ticket sales. Air France grounded its supersonic fleet in May.

The flight from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport zoomed 11 crew and 100 passengers, many of them celebrities and aviation boosters, across the Atlantic in about three hours and 30 minutes, at nearly twice the speed of sound.

The delta-winged plane made a stately final approach west along the Thames, granted a low-altitude approach for a last look at Big Ben and Buckingham Palace among the sights of central London.

It was a bittersweet end to nearly 28 years of commercial supersonic travel. Many Britons expressed pride in the technological achievement the Concorde embodied but sadness that its days in the skies were ending without a supersonic successor to take its place.

The thousands who gathered outside Heathrow's perimeter toting cameras and binoculars said they saw it as a day to celebrate, not mourn.

Marilyn Payne, 55, lives under the Concorde's flight path, said that after 20 years she still rushed out to her garden to watch it.

"When Concorde flies over, a lot of people are covering their ears and complaining about the noise," she said. "I'm smiling. We're going to miss it a lot."

© 2003 The Associated Press

Tibetan Monk Knew He Wouldn't Live Long

Radio Free Asia, via Snow Lion Publications, reports

In letter left behind after his death, Nyima Drakpa describes torture

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6, 2003--The Tibetan monk who died last week while serving a prison term for putting up anti-Chinese posters has left behind a letter, obtained by Radio Free Asia (RFA), in which he describes torture he suffered at the hands of his Chinese jailers.

The letter, dated April 1, 2001 and addressed to Tibet's exiled leader the Dalai Lama, was intended for release after Nyima Drakpa's death. Nyima Drakpa, in his late 20s, died at 4 a.m. on Oct. 2 in Dawu (in Chinese, Daofu) County, an historically Tibetan area now part of China's Sichuan Province, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"On March 22, [2000], when I was in Lhasa, four Public Security people from Dawu County came and arrested me," he wrote. "Without asking anything, they beat me so severely that I couldn't speak. Without food or even a drop of water, I was put on a plane and escorted to Chengdu, where I was detained for 10 days."

"During those days I was beaten severely and couldn't move because I was in so much pain. Without any pity, they made me half-dead and my legs became numb. Under such severe pain and torture, I confessed that I had put up the posters. Therefore last year, on Oct. 5, the Karze Court sentenced me to nine years' imprisonment," he wrote. "I am still suffering. I cannot eat well and my legs remain damaged by the beatings. I know I will not survive long. I am not afraid of death."

"I appeal to His Holiness the Dalai Lama to let the world know of this. All our Tibetan brothers and sisters should know how the Chinese are illegally bullying us with torture and imprisonment. Every one of us should be united
and protest against China."

In the letter, signed Kheri Nyima Drakpa, he described himself as "a Tibetan youth of Dawu County in [the] Kham" region of what was historically Tibet. "I have boundless affection and devotion for the Tibetans. In my research, I
learned how backward our race is, and how we don't even have the basic human right of using our own language... In other words, we don't enjoy any kind of political authority in our own land," Nyima Drakpa wrote.

"At the same time, after studying the wonderful history of our ancestors who governed our country, I have the courage and determination to sacrifice even my life for the Tibetans. I wish for an independent country of our own where all Tibetans can enjoy real freedom."

"I decided to sacrifice my own life and put up posters on April 9, 1998, on Nov. 10, 12, and 19, 1999, on Dec. 6 and 29, 1999, and Jan. 7, 2000, on the sides and walls of Dawu County government buildings in Dawu," he wrote. In one poster, he said, he signed his own name, and in all of them he called on Beijing to withdraw from Tibet.

Nyima Drakpa was hospitalized 10 days before his death, sources told RFA's Tibetan service. "When he was brought in, he could not speak and his legs were thin and lifeless," said one person who asked not to be named.

The precise cause of death wasn't immediately known. Chinese authorities had transferred Nyima Drakpa from prison to hospital in late September as his health deteriorated sharply. Nyima Drakpa had been serving a nine-year term for alleged "activities to split the motherland and destabilize the community."

"While in prison, Chinese officials told him to confess his mistakes in exchange for early release, but he just reiterated that what he had written was true, and he told them to do whatever they wanted to him," another source said.

An official with the Chinese public security office in Dawu, contacted by telephone Oct. 2, said at the time that Nyima Drakpa was in good health. "He committed a serious mistake by getting involved in splittist activities and
undermining stability in the community," the official said. "He is healthy, and I don't know of any ailment. I also don't know where he is detained. There are others detained in prisons who are accomplices of Nyima Drakpa."

Nyima Drakpa was a monk at the Nyatso monastery in Dawu, according to people who knew him. He joined the Ganden monastery in India after fleeing there in 1990. Nyima Drakpa attended Khampa University in Dawu, where he read Tibetan history.

According to the 2002 State Department report on human rights around the world, Chinese authorities in Tibet "continue to commit serious human rights abuses, including instances of torture, arbitrary arrest, detention without public trial, and lengthy detention of Tibetan nationalists for peacefully expressing their political or religious views."

"Individuals accused of political activism faced ongoing harassment during the year. There were reports of imprisonment and abuse of nuns and monks accused of political activism," it said. "There were no reports of prisoner deaths during the year. Deaths of at least 41 Tibetan political prisoners since 1989 can be attributed to severe abuse under detention; at least 20 of those prisoners had been in Lhasa's Drapchi Prison."

This article provided by:

Radio Free Asia
www.rfa.org

RFA broadcasts news and information to Asian listeners who lack regular access to full and balanced reporting in their domestic media. Through its broadcasts and call-in programs, RFA aims to fill a critical gap in the lives of people across Asia. Created by Congress in 1994 and incorporated in 1996, RFA currently broadcasts in Burmese, Cantonese, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Mandarin, the Wu dialect, Vietnamese, Tibetan (Uke, Amdo, and Kham), and Uyghur. It adheres to the highest standards of journalism and aims to exemplify accuracy, balance, and fairness in its editorial content.

Alaskan Village invited to test cheap, clean Nuclear Power

JOEL GAY, Anchorage Daily News, reports:

A Japanese corporation wants to thrust the Interior community of Galena into international limelight by donating a new, unconventional electricity-generating plant that would light and heat the Yukon River village pollution-free for 30 years.

There's a catch, of course. It's a nuclear reactor.

Not a huge, Three Mile Island-type power plant but a new generation of small nuclear reactor about the size of a big spruce tree. Designers say the technology is safe, simple and cheap enough to replace diesel-fired generators as the primary energy source for villages across rural Alaska.

Such a plant would also have enough excess power to create hydrogen gas, proponents say. They envision Galena as a demonstration center for the highly vaunted hydrogen economy, in which cars and trucks could run on the clean-burning gas.

Department of Energy officials say the new technology is promising but enormous hurdles remain. A reactor of this type and size has never been built anywhere in the world, much less tested and licensed for use in the United States. The cost of building a prototype that meets stringent U.S. safety standards could kill it, said a nuclear engineer at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Public skepticism is another potential barrier. The proposed plant would be the first commercial use of nuclear power in Alaska, but fears about potential accidents and about disposal of nuclear waste have chilled the industry in the Lower 48. No new commercial plants have been licensed since the late 1980s.

Supporters, including U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, acknowledge it will be difficult to persuade Alaskans to embrace nuclear power in Galena or elsewhere. But even environmental groups say the incentive to replace expensive diesel fuel as the source of electricity in rural Alaska is reason to continue investigating the small reactor technology.

"The word 'nuclear' makes me nervous," said Randy Virgin of the Alaska Center for the Environment. "But we've long seen the problems with diesel, and I'm pretty excited about the prospect of a clean source of energy," he said. "It sounds very promising, but I'd approach it with extreme skepticism."

The Galena design is part of a new generation of small nuclear reactors that can be built in a factory and transported by barge, truck or helicopter. A federal study, funded at Stevens' request and published in May 2001, found they are inherently safe and easy to operate, resistant to sabotage or theft, cost effective and transportable.

Toshiba Corp., the Japanese electronics giant, calls its reactor the 4S system: super-safe, small and simple.

Washington, D.C., attorney Doug Rosinski, who represents Toshiba, calls the reactor a "nuclear battery," although it has nothing in common with the typical AA cell. The power comes from a core of non-weapons-grade uranium about 30 inches in diameter and 6 feet tall. It would put out a steady stream of 932-degree heat for three decades but can be removed and replaced like a flashlight battery when the power is depleted, he said.

The reactor core would be constructed and sealed at a factory, then shipped to the site. There it is connected with the other, nonnuclear parts of the power plant to form a steel tube about 70 feet long with the nuclear core welded into the bottom like the eraser in a pencil, Rosinski said. The assembly is then lowered into a concrete housing buried in the ground, making it as immune to attack or theft as a missile in its silo.

The reactor has almost no moving parts and doesn't need an operator. The nuclear reaction is controlled by a reflector that slowly slides over the uranium core and keeps the nuclear fission "critical." If the reflector stops moving, the reactor loses power. If the shield moves too fast, the core "burns" more quickly, yielding the same amount of power but reducing the reactor's life, Rosinski said.

Because of its design and small size, the Toshiba reactor can't overheat or melt down, he said, unlike what happened in the 1986 accident at Chernobyl that killed 30 people and spewed radiation across northern Europe.

The nuclear reaction heats liquid sodium in the upper portion of the reactor assembly. It circulates by convection, eliminating pumps and valves that need maintenance and can cause problems, Rosinski said. The liquid is contained in a separate chamber so it isn't radioactive. Because the reactor assembly is enclosed in a thick steel tube, it will withstand earthquakes and floods, Rosinski said.

"What comes out (of the ground) are two pipes with steam that power a turbine," he said. "You wouldn't even know it's there," except for the steam generator building above it.

The Toshiba design looks safe on paper, according to Hermann Grunder, director of Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, a federal research facility that has investigated the new generation of reactors. Liquid sodium eliminates corrosion, which is a primary cause of nuclear power plant accidents, Grunder wrote to the Daily News in an e-mail.

"The probability of radioactive material leakage for this system would be extremely low," he wrote.

Toshiba's design is based largely on existing reactor technology and appears technically feasible, Grunder wrote. "The main roadblock, if any, would be the cost."

Rosinski agreed. The biggest hurdle is winning approval by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he said, which will require Toshiba to finish its design, then build a prototype. He estimated the work would cost $600 million or more and take six to eight years. The Galena plant could be online by 2010, he said. Once the first one is complete, Toshiba believes it can build additional plants for about $20 million each, he said.

Galena was selected as the demonstration site largely for economic reasons, Rosinski said. Toshiba hopes to market its reactors where electricity is expensive and power lines don't exist, he said, such as rural Alaska. Gasoline in Galena costs $3.35 a gallon, and diesel-generated electricity is roughly twice as expensive as in Anchorage, even with the state power cost equalization subsidy.

Galena was also selected because of its environmental attitude, Rosinski said. The community has a history of environmental awareness, ranging from a plastic bag ban to water quality protection on the Yukon River. With the Toshiba reactor in place, the village could eliminate the hazards of transporting, storing and burning the nearly 700,000 gallons of diesel it uses annually to generate electricity.

But another reason for selecting a small Alaska village is political, Rosinski said. Toshiba will need financial aid from the U.S. and Japanese governments to develop the 4S technology.

"We know we can build 100 of them, but the one-time costs to meet all the licensing is beyond any one company or country," he said.

In addition, the federal Energy Department has focused past research almost entirely on large-scale nuclear power.

"We have to make the policy arguments to get our piece of the funding" for small-reactor study, Rosinski said. "That's where the strength of the Alaska delegation is important."

Stevens said recently he was glad to hear Toshiba's proposal but figured the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will determine whether it's technically feasible for rural Alaska. But even federal licensing may not be enough for Galena to go nuclear, he said.

"The real problem ... is public acceptance," Stevens said.

He noted that the Air Force had to remove 10 small generators powered by a radioactive source in the northeastern Interior in 2001 after the nearest villagers learned about the material and complained.

Between local concerns and opposition from environmental groups, "I don't know what we're supposed to do" to replace diesel fuel in rural Alaska, Stevens said, "unless we get the possibility to deploy small-scale nuclear reactors."

Nuclear watchdog and environmental groups said they know little about Toshiba's small reactor. But while several said the technology sounds promising, they note that the nuclear power industry has a history of making bold claims it couldn't back up.

"Back in the 1950s, they said (nuclear power) would be too cheap to meter," said Norm Buske, director of the Seattle-based organization The RadioActive Campaign. Toshiba's claim that its reactor will run trouble-free for 30 years sounds good, he said, but projections for unproven technology are just guesses.

"And what if something goes wrong" Buske asked. Nuclear power plants don't usually have small accidents. "If it goes bad, it tends to go really, really bad," he said. "One hopes nothing will go wrong, but one wants to ... make sure it's all insured."

Galena is an open-minded village and would love to shake its diesel habit, but it will need convincing before it embraces nuclear power, said Peter Captain Sr., chief of Louden Tribal Council.

"Like anything new, it's going to have to be studied pretty closely before we agree to bring it in," Captain said. "We're not going let them bring it in and suffer the consequences afterward."

Though Toshiba says it will engineer the reactor to withstand earthquakes, forest fires and floods, Captain is reserving judgment.

"Sure they say it's impossible to spill (radioactive material) for it to get out. But nothing in this world is impossible," he said.

On the other hand, the technology holds promise, he said.

"If it works and it works to perfection, great; it might be a starting point for lowering the high cost of living all over the place," Captain said.

Galena is moving carefully, city manager Marvin Yoder said. The town had started a long-range look at alternatives to diesel when the Toshiba proposal hit town.

"This opened our eyes to brand-new possibility," he said, all of which will be investigated.

If nuclear power doesn't seem right for the village, Galena won't balk at turning down a $20 million gift, he said. But if residents like the idea and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gives its blessing, the Yukon River village won't hesitate to go nuclear, Yoder said.

"Somebody has to test that first one," he said.

Daily News reporter Joel Gay can be reached at or at 257-4310.

(Published: October 21, 2003)

The Iraqi Monkey Trap

William Raspberry, Washington Post, writes:

"The Bush administration has stuck its hand into a coconut called Iraq, grabbed a fistful of oil and control, and now is finding it difficult to get out. It is trapped by its power and its greed. Now it screams for help from the United Nations (which it had earlier dismissed as irrelevant and inconsequential). And all the administration would have to do is to turn loose some control, and it might be able to withdraw with dignity."

"But like the monkey, it places greater value on the spoils of war than on freedom for the Iraqi people, reconciliation with the world order and what might very well be the soul of our nation."

Monday, October 20, 2003; Page A23

There is a legend, the Rev. Earl Neil told the congregation of Trinity Episcopal Church here one recent Sunday, that certain African tribesmen have a clever way of trapping monkeys.

They begin by making a paw-sized hole in a coconut, then filling the coconut with rice or some similarly attractive food. A monkey will come along, stick in his paw and grab a fistful of rice -- and then find that he can't get his paw out.

"It screams for help, but it is trapped by its own greed," Neil explained. "As you and I can see, all the monkey would have to do is turn loose of the rice. His open hand could easily be withdrawn. The problem is that the monkey places greater value on the rice than on his own freedom."

That was the attention-getting windup. Here was the pitch:

"The Bush administration has stuck its hand into a coconut called Iraq, grabbed a fistful of oil and control, and now is finding it difficult to get out. It is trapped by its power and its greed. Now it screams for help from the United Nations (which it had earlier dismissed as irrelevant and inconsequential). And all the administration would have to do is to turn loose some control, and it might be able to withdraw with dignity.

"But like the monkey, it places greater value on the spoils of war than on freedom for the Iraqi people, reconciliation with the world order and what might very well be the soul of our nation."

The analogy isn't perfect. After all, it was the administration that laid the coconut trap in the first place -- against international and domestic advice that there was no need to rush unilaterally into what was likely to be an easy war and a fiendishly difficult peace.

But it works well enough. Even the administration itself might agree. Early last week administration officials ponied up a series of what they hoped would be seen as fist-opening concessions in a new resolution adopted Thursday by the U.N. Security Council. It would establish a multinational force to help the American- and British-led forces in Iraq and also provide more money to rebuild that devastated country. In exchange, the United States would grant at least symbolic self-governance to the Iraqi people by declaring that the Iraqi Governing Council and its ministers "will embody the sovereignty of the state of Iraq."

The administration clearly wants its hand free of the coconut.

But it also wants the rice. The Iraqi Governing Council is seen by many Iraqis as a creature not of Iraq's people but of the United States. And as if to underscore the point, the resolution reaffirms America's authority to administer and rule the country (and its assets) until we deem it time to turn control over to people we deem worthy of wielding it.

If it's hard to know whether the Bush administration wants a freed hand more than it wants the rice, it may be because different influential players in the administration want different things and are willing to pay different prices for them.

In many ways, the president's mind has been a battleground for the fighting between pragmatists and ideologues -- between those who see America's interests in more or less traditional terms (trade, good relations with neighbors and some deference to international rule) and those who see America's unchallenged power as a heaven-sent opportunity to reorder the world -- at least that part of it called the Middle East.

Perhaps that is why the president is trying to consolidate postwar authority under his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, thus bringing control back to the White House and away from the Rumsfeld/Cheney/Wolfowitz axis of hubris.

But pretty soon the president himself will have to do something about that coconut. Does he want the rice -- control of Iraq's oil and lucrative rebuilding contracts for his political friends at Bechtel, Halliburton and elsewhere -- more than he wants the possibility of extracting himself from a mess he was warned about but still blustered into

Will he end up just another trapped monkey

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Restaurants On the Fringe, And Thriving

JANELLE BROWN, The New York Times, reports:

IT was 9 o'clock on a Friday night at Mamasan's Bistro in the Mission District and the food was running a little late, but no one seemed to mind. Two dozen diners perched on folding chairs, listening to a hip-hop D.J. spin classic De La Soul in the glow of the Christmas lights dangling overhead. The restaurant's proprietor, a willowy 37-year-old woman who would reveal only her first name, Lynette, was in the kitchen placidly doctoring coconut yams on her crowded four-burner stove.

''This place has become my second home,'' said Carlos Castille, an artist, as he sipped a coconut-mango cocktail. ''There's a comfort to it. It's so mellow. I've brought all my friends.''

But securing a seat at Mamasan's is not easy. The restaurant, which also happens to be Lynette's apartment, has no sign, and the only way you will ever find it is if someone tells you where it is (a quiet street, a hidden door, up a dark stairwell to the top apartment). Even then, you can't just show up: you must have an invitation. To get one you need an introduction from a previous guest. This may seem as if it's a complicated way to get a plate of grilled salmon, but Mamasan's Bistro is not a legal endeavor. Its kitchen lacks the certificates, permits and inspections required by the city of San Francisco. And although the coconut-mango cocktails flowed, Lynette does not have a liquor license.

(via BoingBoing)

Mamasan's is not, however, an anomaly. Restaurants of dubious legality, where food is cooked in apartments and backyards, abound across the United States. These underground restaurants range from upscale to gritty, and are born from youthful idealism, ethnic tradition or economic necessity. They lack certification from any government agency and are, strictly speaking, against the law. You dine in them at your own risk. If you can find them.

Over the last four years, Lynette said, more than a thousand customers have come through her doors to eat pungent Chamorran dishes from Guam, where she was raised in the local Chamorro culture. She cooks them with her 61-year-old mother, the Mamasan of the restaurant's name.

''I've worked at restaurants for years, and dealing with the public is a beast,'' Lynette said. ''You don't get to edit who comes into your space, and it becomes a very sterile exchange of goods. I like knowing who is coming, and whether they understand what I'm doing.''

Lynette describes her restaurant as a kind of ''party'' -- albeit one that comes with a bill -- and many underground restaurateurs harbor similar visions. Most chefs, after all, cook because they want to feed people great meals, but in the end, the compliments of satisfied diners are not always compensation for the headaches of running a business.

Club Azteca, in a private home in San Pablo, Calif., is open only on Saturday mornings. Customers sometimes drive hours for its menudo and lamb birria. Azteca, which starts serving at 6 a.m., is about eight months old.

''My parents used to run a restaurant before, but it was never as much fun as this,'' said Erika Carravieri, 30, who helps her parents operate the place. ''Everyone drinks and sings, and at 6 o'clock in the morning! When they were running a restaurant, my mom aged so much in a year.''

Gray hair is exactly what Michael Hebbe and Naomi Pomeroy hoped to avoid when they started Ripe in Portland, Ore. The young couple had cooked at a number of the city's better-known restaurants and knew, they said, how deflating and impersonal the professional cooking experience could be.

''The kitchen is demeaning,'' Mr. Hebbe said. ''You cook for people you don't see. All you hear from guests is, 'This is undercooked' or 'This needs to be redone.' That environment doesn't seem sustainable or healthy, which is why the staff turnover at restaurants is so incredible.''

Ripe, in contrast, was conceived three years ago as a twice-a-month supper club for a select group of guests. Their first night, Mr. Hebbe and Ms. Pomeroy served 22 people in their living-room-turned-dining room. Within months they had an online mailing list in the thousands and a bustling catering business.

Ripe recently moved into a tiny licensed commercial kitchen in the back of a downtown office building and is now, Mr. Hebbe said, ''fairly legal.'' Guests pay $20 (not including wine and dessert) to eat cassoulet or risotto served out of communal bowls.

After only two years of business, Mr. Hebbe says that Ripe is also profitable, which is more than most new restaurants can say. Mr. Hebbe attributes this to Ripe's underground roots. After all, he did not have to make an initial investment in a building or lay out a bundle for licenses, or insurance, or marketing, or staff. Starting a restaurant from scratch, depending on ambition and location, can cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.

''The startup cost of most operations is astronomical,'' Mr. Hebbe said. ''It's impossible to do it by the book and make money in your first three to five years.''

Working underground can also be a way for a would-be restaurateur to test the waters of professional cooking. Joseph DeSalazar, 27, an advertising executive, runs a sporadically open restaurant called Foodies, serving dinner in various rented lofts in New York City. He ventured into his floating concern after spending his weekends volunteering in the kitchens at Café Boulud and 11 Madison Park. ''With Foodies, I didn't feel like I was making a lifelong commitment,'' he said. ''It isn't a fixed location, I don't have any expectations to live up to, and it can change every time.''

Many underground concerns are born of neighborhood necessity. According to Jim Leff, a food critic who founded the Web site Chowhound.com, apartment-based restaurants are common among Brazilian and African families who live in immigrant communities in Queens. One family, he said, might make it its business to prepare cheap takeout meals for an entire apartment building.

''They are filling a niche that isn't filled by restaurants,'' Mr. Leff said, ''doing it in areas where there are no restaurants, doing it at lower price points, or serving traditional dishes that restaurants are afraid to serve because they are too unusual.''

Most underground restaurants are a simple matter of economic necessity. Mr. Leff's favorite, he said, is the domain of a ''genius'' cook who once ran the ''best Venezuelan restaurant in New York.'' After that restaurant closed in a dispute between business partners, the cook could not afford to open her own establishment, so she began cooking out of the basement of her house in Queens.

''I've eaten there on card tables,'' Mr. Leff said. ''She is basically a homeless chef. Housing is not the only thing that's being priced out of the league of real people.''

The downside of running an underground restaurant is, of course, the chance of getting caught by the licensing authorities. Laws vary from state to state; in California, a dining establishment must comply with local zoning restrictions and be inspected by the fire department, the liquor authority and the health department. In addition, a state-certified ''food handler'' must be on staff at all times. New York has comparable requirements.

''It's all about how to avoid making people sick,'' said Jack Breslin, director of the consumer protection program at the San Francisco health department. ''If no one is looking over my shoulder to see how I'm storing, processing and serving my food, the greater the risk of something bad happening.''

And although the health department, at least in San Francisco, probably will not throw underground restaurateurs in jail, it will shut them down if it sniffs them out, which is one reason most advertise only by word of mouth. (Mr. Leff recommends asking taxi drivers.) On Internet sites like Chowhound.com, diners often lament the passing of beloved underground boîtes, like the Blue Tarp Thai restaurant in West Philadelphia, where until this summer, students and professors from the University of Pennsylvania ate green papaya salad at tables in the backyard of the Phanthavong family's row house.

Sunny Phanthavong, 18, said the family knew their restaurant was illegal, ''but thought we were doing something positive for the community.'' After several years in business, they were discovered by an observant police officer. ''He was writing a ticket for someone who was eating outside while parked illegally, and saw through the gate,'' Ms. Phanthavong explained.

In November, after receiving a loan from a community-oriented university program, the family reopened legally as the Vientiane Cafe, but it is not the same, Ms. Phanthavong said. ''I miss the old days of the backyard,'' she said.

Another drawback to the business of running an underground restaurant is the simple wear and tear that occurs when strangers troop through your home. Over the years, Lynette of Mamasan's Bistro has lost, she said, ''pretty much every good CD'' she has owned to light-fingered guests. And one reason Mr. Hebbe in Portland decided to move Ripe into a licensed kitchen was concern about his white carpets. ''Every two weeks our living room got ripped out to make space for tables,'' he said, ''and then we had to tear it down and clean up, and then two weeks later do it again. And we had to wash every single dish by hand.''

He may someday look back on those days of constant furniture rearranging and dish-water hands with fondness. Veva Edelson began her career running an illegal cafe in her home in Arcata, Calif., cooking vegetarian cuisine at bargain-basement prices. Today, although a co-owner of Firefly, a well-reviewed, popular and quite legal restaurant in San Francisco, she is sometimes nostalgic for its predecessor. ''I have dreams that I'm moving Firefly into my mother's living room and that it's now a one-night-a-week restaurant, off the books and cash only, where people just come and enjoy themselves,'' she said. ''There's so much less expectation when something is amateur.''

Up in her crowded apartment, Lynette occasionally thinks about making Mamasan's legitimate. Last year, she looked into a restaurant space, but became discouraged when she realized that it would cost $250,000 to renovate it and bring it up to code. So Mamasan's continues as a part-time restaurant that, while barely taking in enough money to cover the rent, has the virtue of retaining its personal touch.

''I do it for the love, mostly,'' she said. ''I don't exactly want to boast that I have an illegal establishment in my house, but this is how artists survive.''

Six Die in Downtown Chicago Fire

CHICAGO (AP) — Six people were killed Friday in an extra-alarm fire that trapped workers in smoke-filled stairways and hallways of a Cook County administration building in the heart of downtown, officials said.

The dead were among 13 victims overcome by smoke who were not discovered until after the fire had been brought under control and firefighters were conducting a floor-by-floor search of the 35-story building. Some of those trapped had called 911 on their cellular phones.

“Searching for all those people, at the same time fighting the fire is more complicated than it looks from the outside,” Fire Commissioner James Joyce said.

Joyce said that the people that died appeared to be from one stairwell around the 22nd floor.

Joyce said it is not unusual to find more people in the later stages of a fire in a 35-story building that can hold as many as 2,500 people during business hours.

A foot-by-foot search of the building was completed about five hours after the fire was first reported at 5:03 p.m.

Authorities said 12 people were treated at area hospitals and some were in serious and critical condition.

Joyce said he did not know how the fire got started in the building, which has an alarm system but no sprinklers. The fire broke out in the 12th floor housing Illinois Secretary of State offices, and workers there said they first saw smoke coming from a storage room.

Homebound commuters in the Loop business district looked up to see flames and dense gray smoke pouring from the 12th-story windows of the building that houses county and state offices. The blaze snarled rush-hour traffic and forced subway commuters to bypass underground tunnels.

The fire was extinguished by 175 firefighters working with hoses inside the building and a snorkel truck that poured water through the windows. Firefighters rushed out of the building with victims on stretchers with oxygen masks on their faces.

China Launches Its First Piloted Spaceflight

Jim Banke, Space.com, reports:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- China reached a milestone in human history Tuesday with the launch of its first piloted spaceflight into Earth orbit.

Blasting off from a remote space base in the Gobi Desert atop a Long March 2F rocket, a single Chinese astronaut named Yang Liwei is circling the planet every 90 minutes aboard the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

As a result, China has become only the third nation on Earth capable of independently launching its citizens into orbit. The former Soviet Union was first in 1961, followed by the United States in 1962.

"I feel good," Yang said 30 minutes into the flight, according to Xinhua. He then reported his blood pressure and other vital signs were normal and said "See you tomorrow."

It is expected the three-part capsule, whose more modern design is largely based on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, will make 14 orbits and remain in space for about 21 hours before executing re-entry and a parachute landing onto Chinese soil.

Liwei, 38, is an avid ice skater and swimmer, according to Chinese news media. He was raised in the northeast province of Liaoning and comes from a family of teachers. He had been a pilot since 1987 and an astronaut since 1998.

"I will not disappoint the motherland. I will complete each movement with total concentration. And I will gain honor for the People's Liberation Army and for the Chinese nation," Chinese news media reported Yang as saying before the shot.

Liwei already is a hero to the Chinese people.

And if successful, observers say the communist nation will have demonstrated improved technological competence and scored a propaganda victory in the world community. How the rest of the planet actually reacts remains to be seen.

When the Soviet Union launched Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961, and having already lofted the first artificial satellite in 1957, a full scale Space Race to the Moon was begun with the United States in an effort to prove which economic and political system was better.

And clearly, one of China's aims is to enhance its prestige, said Dean Cheng, a China space specialist for the CNA Corporation in Arlington, Va.

"By the very fact that it is a space power, China already has set itself apart from most other nations, and certainly all the other Asian states," he said in a recent forum on China's space prowess.

China's space infrastructure, its array of launchers, its space industries, Cheng said, and now a piloted space mission, "place them above even the Japanese, in terms of demonstrated space capabilities. Instead, they are in the same category as ourselve and the Russians."

And with NASA's shuttle fleet grounded because of the Feb. 1 Columbia tragedy, China's new capability appears at an interesting time. Moreover, the U.S. military is likely to keep a close eye on future developments.

In fact, according to a Pentagon report released in July, China's space program will result in making them a greater military threat.

"While one of the strongest immediate motivations for this program appears to be political prestige, China's efforts almost certainly will contribute to improved military space systems in the 2010-2020 timeframe," the report to Congress said.

The report quoted a Chinese naval captain, Shen Zhongchang, as writing: "The mastery of outer space will be a requisite for military victory, with outer space becoming the new commanding heights for combat."

Another view, expressed before the launch, comes from The Times of India, which in an editorial Monday called the Shenzhou 5 launch a "joke."

"It would be better to call it China's Late Creep Forward, given that Beijing is attempting to showcase a four-decade-old technology. If this is China's idea of arriving, then it's come at a time when the other two spacefaring nations have left it light years behind," the publication said.

The mission began at 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday (0100 GMT Wednesday), which was early morning at the Jiuquan Space Launch Center in Inner Mongolia. A last minute decision to not broadcast the launch on live television prevented millions from seeing the 19-story-tall rocket climb toward space.

Chinese president Hu Jintao was at the launch site to witness the shot in person and called it "the glory of our great motherland."

"The party and the people will never forget those who have set up the outstanding merit in the space industry for the motherland, the people and the nation," Hu said.

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe added his congratulations in a statement released late Tuesday.

"This launch is an important achievement in the history of human exploration. The Chinese people have a long and distinguished history of exploration. NASA wishes China a continued safe human space flight program," O'Keefe said.

In Washington, Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin said, "We wish them success and for their astronaut's safe return."

It took 10 minutes for the Long March 2F to carry the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft into orbit. Shenzhou is Chinese for "divine vessel."

The Long March 2F is a two-stage rocket equipped with four liquid-fueled strap-on boosters. An escape tower attached to the Shenzhou spacecraft topped off the launch vehicle.

The spacecraft is capable of holding up to three astronauts, which some are calling "taikonauts" based on the English translation of the Chinese word for space. Others are using the word "yuhangyuan," which means travelers of the universe.

Flying alone for this first mission, Liwei was among 14 astronauts who have been training for several years. Some of the pilots spent time at Star City near Moscow, where Russian cosmonauts prepare for their missions.

Although the Shenzhou spacecraft is based on the Soyuz design, it is slightly more advanced and uses more modern computers to manage operations and navigation.

Beijing insists, however, that everything sent into space was developed and made in China. State media, trying to dispel suggestions that its triumph depended on foreign know-how, has refered to Shenzhou as "China's self-designed manned spaceship."

Christopher Bodeen of the Associated Press contributed to this report from the launch site in the Gobi Desert.

Mac Supercomputer: Fast, Cheap

Leander Kahney, WIRED News, reports:

The brand new "Big Mac" supercomputer at Virginia Tech could be the second most powerful supercomputer on the planet, according to preliminary numbers.

Early benchmarks of Virginia Tech's brand new supercomputer -- which is strung together from 1,100 dual-processor Power Mac G5s -- may vault the machine into second place in the rankings of the worlds' fastest supercomputers, second only to Japan's monstrously big and expensive Earth Simulator.

The Big Mac's final score on the Linpack Benchmark won't be officially revealed until Nov. 17, when the rankings of the Top 500 supercomputer sites are made known at the International Supercomputer Conference.

But Jack Dongarra, one of the compilers of a Top 500 list, said Tuesday that preliminary numbers submitted to him suggest Big Mac could be ranked as high as second place.

"They're getting about 80 percent of the theoretical peak," Dongarra said. "If it holds, and it's unclear if it will, it has the potential to be the world's second most powerful machine."

The Big Mac's theoretical peak is 17.6 teraflops, which would easily put it in second place behind Japan's Earth Simulator, a monster machine composed of more than 5,000 processors operating at 35.6 trillion calculations per second.

Dongarra warned that no machine ever performs at its theoretical peak. But even if the Big Mac comes in at 80 percent of its theoretical limit, it still will make No. 2 on the current list.

"We're just making up numbers here," Dongarra cautioned. "We don’t have real numbers yet. If they get 80 percent, it will be slightly faster than (ASCI Q, the current No. 2 on the Top 500 list)."

Built by Hewlett-Packard for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, ASCI Q is based on 8,000 Alpha processors and operates at 13.8 teraflops.

Dongarra said Big Mac's early numbers were based on tests run on 128 processors, or about 5 percent of the machine's total 2,200 processors. "It just gets worse as you add more processors," he said.

Jason Lockhart, associate director of Virginia Tech's terascale computing facility, which built the machine, said final benchmarks have been run but declined to share the numbers.

When asked where the machine would place in the Top 500 rankings, he responded: "We expect the machine to place well. The goal is to be in the top 10. How about that"

Lockhart cautioned that even if Big Mac beat most of the machines in the current Top 10, the list, which is compiled twice a year, is a moving target. Lockhart said there are four or five new supercomputers coming online that also may qualify for places in the Top 10.

If the Big Mac supercomputer turns out to be the second most powerful in the world, it is a remarkable achievement.

The machine is the first supercomputer based on Macs; it is one of the few supercomputers built entirely from off-the-shelf components and it cost a bargain-bucket price -- only $5.2 million. By comparison, most of the top 10 supercomputers cost about $40 million and up. The Earth Simulator cost $350 million.

"It is impressive, absolutely impressive what they've done," said Dongarra. "($5.2 million is) a very low number for a computer of this size and power."

Dongarra said the cost is so low he questioned whether the college got a special discount. Lockhart couldn't be reached for an answer.

Dongarra said in terms of the number of processors, Big Mac's closest analog is a cluster of 2,300 2.4 GHz Xeon processors at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Clocked at 7.6 teraflops, the cluster is currently ranked third. "It will be interesting to see where the G5 comes in comparison to this machine," he said.

iPod for Audiophiles

By Wes Phillips, Stereophile Magazine, writes:

How does it feel to be One of the beautiful people

Apple's 30GB iPod is an extremely sexy gadget. As a piece of industrial design, it is remarkable in its beauty and operability. As an extension of Apple's lifestyle-friendly suite of music-photography-video applications, it is a screaming success. It's fun to use, and if just seeing one is enough to induce lust, actually holding one is enough to tempt a righteous man to larceny. But is it a serious piece of kit worthy of serious consideration by an audiophile

Surprisingly enough, I believe the answer is yes. The open nature of the iPod's playback format—or, more properly speaking, its lack of a single playback standard—means that the player can offer the sound quality its owner demands of it. Presumably, that could even include options not currently supported, including space-hogging, hi-rez digital files. However, that will happen only if audiophiles take hard-drive-based players seriously enough to participate in the ongoing dialog concerning their use and possibilities.

Fortunately, that's already happening, as a quick Google of the subject will reveal. Users are actively seeking better sound, even as they trade stories about how much fun they're having with the product as it currently exists.

And why shouldn't they be happy With the iPod, you can have your cake and eat it, too. On the outside, all that the rest of the world will see is that you're one of the iPod-totin' beautiful people; no one will ever know that under those headphones you're listening to monstrously good-sounding, hi-rez digital copies of your favorite demo discs. Baby, you're a rich man!

It was John Atkinson, that legendary ornithologist, who first pointed it out: "Have you noticed how frequently you see women using the iPod"
I hadn't. I'd been so darn happy striding about the streets of New York listening to Tom Russell and Carla Bley that I hadn't been paying attention. Gimlet-eyed, I now began examining my fellow pedestrians for the telltale flash of the distinctive white-and-chrome player and the giveaway white headphone cable that announced the iPod's earbuds.

What an astoundingly acute observer of the human condition Stereophile's editor proved to be! Of course, there were guys walking around with 'em (many wearing "Think Different!" T-shirts), but the streets were filled with fashionably dressed young women brandishing iPods as though they were this season's trendiest little Manolo Blahnik sling-back.

Holy cow! I'm running with the fashionistas! Can I still be an audiophile, too

What did you see when you were there
Apple's third-generation iPods are smaller, sleeker, more capacious than earlier models. The G3 is available with a 10GB, 15GB, or 30GB hard drive. [A 40GB drive is now available.—Ed.] The 30GB version is slightly larger and heavier than the other two, at 4.1" H by 2.4" W by 0.73" D and 6.2oz (compared to 0.62" D and 5.6oz). Our review sample was the 30GB model, which includes several accessories that buyers of the 10GB version have to buy separately: a docking cradle, a wired remote, and a carrying case of elastic and leather. A FireWire connecting cable is standard (it sports an extremely thin "dock connector" on the end that attaches to the iPod, since the iPod itself is too thin to accommodate a standard IEEE1394 plug.) The iPod can connect to a PC through a special 32-pin-to-USB-2.0+FireWire cable. The bifurcated cable has a 32-pin plug on one end, then splits into two cables: one with a USB plug for connection to the computer, the other terminating in a FireWire connector, which plugs into the iPod's power adapter so you can charge the battery.

The iPod is a product of Apple's industrial design department, headed by Jonathan Ives, which means it is very clean and contemporary. The back of the iPod is shiny stainless steel, while the front is bright white plastic. ("White's this year's black," a fashionista of my acquaintance assures me.) The face is dominated by three features: a 1 5/8" by 1¼" (2" diagonal, in TVspeak) backlit LCD display sits above a row of four touch-sensitive control "buttons" (Previous Track, Menu, Play/Pause, Skip Forward), which, in turn, lies above a large touch-sensitive "wheel" that is actually a multifunction control: the outer ring controls volume and navigates through menu choices, while the inner "button" serves as an Enter key.

What's surprising is how flexible and intuitive this seemingly rudimentary control array is in operation. Press Play and the iPod powers on, playing where it left off. Tap Menu and you're given several programming choices. The navigation wheel lets you highlight your choice, and a tap on the enter key takes you to that menu. Use the wheel to choose the option you want, tap enter, and you're there: a new playlist or a new song. All of this can be accomplished one-handed, while running.

The iPod's thin top edge has a 1/8" stereo headphone jack with an adjacent oval slot for anchoring the wired remote (added because users of Gen 1 and 2 iPods complained that the remote disconnected from the chassis too readily), and a sliding panel that activates the hold function for the controls. I found the touch-sensitive control extremely sensitive, so disabling it with the hold function proved a lifesaver.

The thin bottom edge contains the jack for the 32-pin dock connector (interestingly, FireWire uses only six pins—this may represent some sort of future-proofing on Apple's part). In addition to carrying data at 400Mbps, this cable also recharges the iPod's internal lithium-ion battery. Assuming you turn off all "frivolous" functions such as backlighting and EQ, don't skip forward and back much, and use the iPod only in moderate temperatures (50-95 degrees F), the battery will last eight hours. Otherwise, reckon on about six hours.

That cable dock in the iPod's base will fit either the cable or the docking cradle. The iPod slips into the docking cradle, fitting over the cradle's male 32-pin connector, leaning back at a 30 degrees angle (so you can read its display when it's sitting on your desktop). The FireWire-to-iPod cable connects to the back of the docking cradle, but that's not the cradle's only connection. Next to the 32-pin jack is a line-out stereo miniplug jack, an important option for audiophiles since it bypasses the iPod's volume control. The FireWire-to-32-pin cable can be plugged either directly into an Apple computer (for data transfer and recharging) or to the iPod's power adapter (recharge only).

All iPods ship with a pair of earbud-type headphones with 18mm neodymium-powered drivers. These have surprisingly good sound—at least compared to the phones included with most portable players. A pair of low-impedance Etymotic ER-4Ps ($330) offered much better sound and isolation from environmental noise, but that's a subject for another review.

The person who said "Beauty is only skin deep" certainly never popped the cover off an iPod. The design is just as jewel-like inside as out—packed, but definitely a gem of space conservation.

One item that's invisible but indispensable is the iPod's operating system, which, I've been informed, is not of Apple design. PortalPlayer, a company that specializes in developing OSes for cellular phones, PDAs, and other streaming and wireless applications, designed the iPod's human interface. The iPod is so easy to use that it's obvious Apple chose the right company for the job.
Parts choices are said to have been made with an emphasis on sound quality, availability, and "time to market" considerations. Parts vetted include PortalPlayer's own MP3 decoder and controller chip, a Wolfson Microelectronics D/A converter, a Sharp flash-memory chip, Texas Instruments' IEEE1394a interface controller, and a Linear Technologies power-management and battery-charging system. The essential innard is the hard disk drive (HDD), which is amazingly tiny—a 1.8" Toshiba design built to fit Toshiba's PCMCIA cards.

The iPod's PCB is a marvel of parts density—so much so that I was almost completely at sea when confronted with it. The largest item, by far, is the Sony-Fukashima lithium-ion battery, molded to fit over the HDD. The back of the circuit board is dominated by the LCD display and the controls, which are attached directly to the board. The board's landscape is dominated by three large chips, presumably the buffer, CPU, and FireWire controller (the only item I'm sure of, since it's next to the 32-pin input). The rest of the board is jammed with surface-mount components.

What are you going to play
The iPod can be used as an external hard drive for Apple computers—in fact, that's how it shows up on a Mac desktop—but its OS and Apple's iTunes4 software are what distinguish it as an MP3 player. PC users can't use iTunes4, so the CD that comes with the iPod includes MusicMatch software as well as iTunes. iTunes4 is available as a free download from Apple's website. In addition to supporting the iPods, iTunes4 includes several features not available in older versions of Apple's music-management software.

Some of these—such as music streaming, Shared Music, and cover artwork display—are interesting enough, but not germane to a discussion of the iPod's sound quality. The two biggest changes from older versions are linked. One is access to Apple's iTunes music-download website, not currently available to the 90% of computer users who use PCs. The other is the ability to "rip" music in MPEG-4 auto audio coding (AAC) format as well as MP3. (See Sidebar, "Bottom Liners," for details on how this relates to the iTunes website.)

MPEG-4 AAC (ISO/IEC 14496-3, Subpart 4) builds on MPEG-2 AAC's compression technology for data rates greater than 32kbps; at lower data rates, it employs additional tools that augment MPEG-2 AAC, adding scalability and error-resilience characteristics. AAC incorporates temporal noise-shaping, backward-adaptive linear prediction, and enhanced joint-stereo coding techniques. Apple included AAC in its QuickTime 6 software for a variety of reasons, but lists audio quality as the most important of them, citing the many advances in perceptual audio coding and compression that have been achieved in the decade since MP3's development. Apple says, "AAC takes full advantage of these advances, resulting in higher quality output at lower data rates, allowing even modem users to hear a difference."

Ah, modem users...Surely one of AAC's big selling points is its ability to improve compression, packing higher audio quality into smaller files. And, given the tiny size of the iPod and its battery, increased power-management efficiency didn't hurt, either—less processing power is required for decoding AAC files. Additional AAC hot buttons include support for multichannel audio of up to 48 full-frequency channels, and higher-rez sampling rates (up to 96kHz!).

The iPod supports several other audio formats in addition to AAC and MP3, including Audible (designed to download spoken-word files from audible.com, variable bit-rate (VBR) MP3, Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF), and WAV. (All of this choice is available only to Mac users—those syncing their iPods to PCs have to make do with MP3.)

The high-resolution ripping option is AIFF (so closely associated with Apple that some wags insist it stands for Apple's Interchange File Format). The format creates files that contain the raw audio data, channel information (monophonic or stereophonic), bit depth, and sample rate, as well as application-specific data areas, which allow different applications to add information to the file header that aren't removed when the files are processed by other applications—a feature of greater interest to folks who create music on their computers than to those of us transferring pre-recorded music to our storage media. In other words, AIFF is a memory hog, but it's an audiophile's kind of memory hog, since it throws away no data in an attempt to compress the file size.

But iTunes4 does more than rip recordings to stored-file status; it also organizes your music collection and allows you to arrange it into playlists. And it transfers all or any portion of your ripped files to the iPod—a process that's astonishingly fast, thanks to the IEEE1394a connection.

Using iTunes4 is stone simple. It's just as easy to use and intuitively simple as all those raving Apple enthusiasts claim. At least, I think so. As someone who has only recently purchased his first Apple computer, I have grown used to the MusicMatch music-management software, and my memories of learning to use that software have grown so dim that it seems second nature to me now. iTunes4 has a few foibles that differ from the way MusicMatch does things, but I won't swear they're less intuitive, just different from what I've grown used to. Except for one thing: Music Match automatically accesses the CD Data Base (CDDB) for CD and track information when you insert a CD in the disk drive; in iTunes4, you have to pull down the Advanced menu on the toolbar and click "Get track information" (footnote 1). If that strikes you as a trivial inconvenience, we're on the same wavelength.

---

Footnote 1: Our thanks to reader Gordon Neault, who reminded us that to access the CDDB database automatically on a Mac, you launch iTunes, go to iTunes: Preferences: General, and click the box at "connect to the Internet when needed." The iPod "is a music player an audiophile can love," summed up Mr. Neault.—John Atkinson

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Apple iPod portable music player: Page 3



What a thing to do!
The iPod is different from CD players, SACD players, DVD-Audio players, and pretty much any other consumer audio player in that it is a data-storage device. At the moment, it offers a variety of data-storage formats; but while I'm aware of no plans to do so, in the future it could accommodate others—even higher-rez options.
The formats the iPod accommodates at the moment offer a wide range of options that balance disc storage space against sound quality. And this, not the iPod's size, is the revolutionary part: the consumer gets to choose which set of tradeoffs suits his or her needs.

This rather basic insight completely escaped me at first. I ripped the same piece of music (Carla Bley's "Looking for America," from the CD of the same title, WATT/31) in a panoply of formats to get to the bottom of the audiophilic question of which sounded best. While performing the comparisons, it gradually sank in that the iPod allowed its user to set the sound bar as high or as low as the situation required. But that wasn't the true brainstorm. No, that would be my realization that there might, in fact, be no single answer to the question, even for sonically picky listeners such as myself. It all depended on how I intended to use the iPod.

Even though the new iPod maxes out at 30GB, it's probably best not to think of it as the permanent repository of your entire music collection. That's what iTunes4 and your computer are for. With FireWire's high-speed data transfer, it's a matter of a few minutes and a few keystrokes to pack the iPod with situation-specific playlists. Going out for a long jog Download a few hours of music ripped at 192kbps on MP3 or AAC. It'll serve. Listening attentively through your big rig Download a program ripped in AIFF—it'll match the original for sound quality.

Of course, this means you may have to rip many songs, albums, or programs twice, which can gobble up masses of hard-drive space—but you can buy 120GB FireWire HDDs for a couple of hundred bucks these days. Jim Thiel likes to observe that "watts is cheap." These days, so is gigabytes.

What do you want to be
The iPod offers such an embarrassment of choices regarding file storage and playback that I had to begin by discarding quite a few of them as irrelevant to a discussion of its fidelity. That's not to say that 96kbps MP3 and AAC, for example, aren't useful space-saving options; simply that they represent sonic compromises most readers of this magazine wouldn't tolerate even while jogging. For the purposes of the following comparisons, I ran the line-out from the docking cradle (thus bypassing the iPod's volume control) to a Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista 300 integrated amplifier, which drove a pair of Amphion Xenon floorstanding loudspeakers. I used Shunyata Research Lyra speaker cables and a Kimber Kable stereo mini-to-RCA interconnect.

Things are somewhat better at 128kbps in both MP3 and AAC, but neither cuts the mustard for critical listening at home. MP3 robbed Steve Swallow's pulsing bass lines of dynamics and punch on the Carla Bley album, while blunting the shimmer of the brass overtones. AAC fared slightly better, offering better bass response (although it was still pretty lightweight compared to the original CD) and slightly more extended HF (again, shelved down in comparison to the CD).

Surprisingly, upping the bit rate to 160kbps did not result in major improvements for either format. Bass impact remained MIA in MP3, and the upper frequencies sounded strident, with that unmistakable "too much compression" punchiness. AAC again sounded marginally better, although Bley's big band still seemed flattened and lacking in dynamic variation.

The audiophile in me began to pay attention at 192kbps. Both MP3 and AAC began to exhibit a small degree of soundstaging, albeit not with great amounts of front-to-back dimensionality or layering. MP3's highs began to lose their stridence, and AAC sounded fairly detailed and revealing.

The compressed formats began to show some real promise at 320kbps. Definition, detail, and soundstaging were all impressive, and high-frequency response was almost liquid in its lack of edge effects. At this rate, differences between the two formats jumped into sharper focus: MP3 made transients "splashy," while AAC just sounded anemic compared to the original. With both formats, dynamic variation was considerably reduced compared to the CD.

Best of all—and, to my ears, completely indistinguishable from the original CD—was AIFF. Dynamics were impressive, imaging was nuanced and detailed, and the frequency extremes sounded extended and natural. On my reference rig, I could listen with immense pleasure for hours on end to files ripped in AIFF. In fact, I did.

Ah, some of you are saying, but what about VBR Variable bit-rate formats seem to offer extremely satisfying sound and show a great deal of potential, but those options deserve greater exploration in a dedicated comparison.

Pressing "SHIFT" Violates DCMA

Ben Berkowitz, Reuters, reports:

LOS ANGELES, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Three days after a Princeton graduate student posted a paper on his Web site detailing how to defeat the copy-protection software on a new music CD by pressing a single computer key, the maker of the software said on Thursday it would sue him.

In a statement, SunnComm Technologies Inc. said it would sue Alex Halderman over the paper, which said SunnComm's MediaMax CD-3 software could be blocked by holding down the "Shift" key on a computer keyboard as a CD using the software was inserted into a disc drive.

"SunnComm believes that by making erroneous assumptions in putting together his critical review of the MediaMax CD-3 technology, Halderman came to false conclusions concerning the robustness and efficacy of SunnComm's MediaMax technology," it said.

SunnComm, which trades on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board, said it has lost more than $10 million of its market value since Halderman published his report.

The software was used on a CD, Anthony Hamilton's "Comin' From Where I'm From," released last month. Halderman, who has done research in the past on other CD protection technologies, said the software could also be disabled by stopping a driver the software loads on the computer when the CD is played.

SunnComm alleged Halderman violated criminal provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in disclosing the existence of those driver files.

Halderman -- who received an undergraduate degree from Princeton earlier this year and is now pursuing a doctorate in computer science with an emphasis on computer security -- said he had not yet heard directly from SunnComm in regards to litigation but was unconcerned.

"I'm still not very worried about litigation under the DMCA, I don't think there's any case," he told Reuters. "I don't think telling people to press the 'Shift' key is a violation of the DMCA."

A spokesman for BMG, the unit of Bertelsmann AG that licensed SunnComm's software and released the Hamilton CD, declined to comment on the planned suit.

The music industry, claiming a sharp decline in CD sales is the result of digital piracy through online file-sharing services, has worked to develop methods to secure music on discs and restrict its copying.

Halderman's graduate advisor at Princeton is Ed Felten, a computer science professor who once sued the Recording Industry Association of America in a challenge to the constitutionality of the DMCA.

The RIAA had threatened action under the DMCA against Felten and colleagues after they said they would publish a paper disclosing flaws in an industry security initiative. That suit was eventually dismissed.

Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service

Multiple Monitors Increase Productivity

According to a NEC-Mitsubishi Press Release:

CHICAGO – October 6, 2003 – Setting a new trend among computer users in the workforce, multi-monitor computing can contribute to increased productivity and enhanced employee satisfaction among corporate users. NEC-Mitsubishi Electronics Display of America, Inc., the number one stand-alone vendor of flat panel desktop displays, ATI Technologies the University of Utah, today released the results of the first ever systematic study of productivity increases across ordinary office tasks using multiple monitor configurations.

The study, entitled Productivity and Multi-Screen Displays examines how multiple monitor configurations increase user productivity and usability. Traditionally used by professionals in the financial or graphics industry, multi-monitor computing is becoming an affordable and effective solution to the increasingly demanding computing scenarios faced by employees in mainstream corporate America. Providing users with the ability to access more information and images simultaneously, multiple monitor configurations allow for more efficient multi-tasking between applications.

“The study reveals multi-screen users get on task quicker, work faster and get more work done with fewer errors editing documents, spreadsheets, and graphic files in comparison with single screen users,” said Dr. James Anderson, professor at the University of Utah’s Department of Communication. “The technology required to support multi-monitor computing is not only affordable, it has become standard within operating systems and LCD displays. Multiple monitor configurations are poised to become the new standard in the workplace.”

By enabling users to work between multiple applications and resolving the need to view and process a multitude of information sources simultaneously, multiple monitor configurations allow users to move and size a variety of information and images across any or all screens to increase productivity. Overall respondents in the study were 10 percent more productive using multiple monitor set ups.

Multi-monitor computing can impact a company’s ROI, when considering the value of errorless work. The study results show that respondents increased their errorless production by 18 percent using multi-screen configurations.

Additionally, multi-monitor configurations can positively impact employee morale, making users feel more comfortable with their ability to complete tasks by allowing for quick navigation and higher task focus. Participants in the study considered multi-screen configurations significantly more useful than single screens and preferred multiple monitor setups on every measure of usability. They found them 29 percent more effective for tasks, 24 percent more comfortable to use in tasks and found it 39 percent easier to move around sources of information.

The Move Toward Multi-Monitor Computing

Organizations can realize significant gains in productivity by simply implementing multiple monitor computing in any situation where multiple screens of information are an ordinary part of daily work. Compared to other technology upgrades, multi-monitor computing has an extremely low learning curve and does not require the significant training investment that companies typically face when implementing a new technology.

Task efficiencies resulting from multi-monitor computing is apparent in a number of application conditions. The act of transferring edits from one draft to another is made simple in a multi-screen configuration where the two documents can be arranged in parallel configuration so that both texts are in full view without any reduction in size. The user can easily confirm the placement of edits through direct observations. Large spreadsheets can be viewed across all the screens in their entirety, allowing the data entry operator to track the proper row of entry. This allows spreadsheets to be accessed completely and manipulated with a full view of the results. Even seemingly simple tasks like proofreading are enhanced by multi-screen displays and eliminate the need to print pages of copy by editing directly in slide, spreadsheet and text applications.

The thin frame 18-inch LCD monitors used in the study were supplied by NEC-Mitsubishi Electronics Display, ideal for multi-monitor configurations. Providing near edge-to-edge viewing, the ultra-thin bezel enables users to view more information simultaneously. The small profile also allows for the placement of multiple displays in a single, space constrained workspace.

“Extending the benefits of greater screen real estate through multi-monitor computing is a natural next step for corporations whose employees rely heavily on computers for day-to-day tasks,” says Chris Connery, director of marketing and product line management for NEC-Mitsubishi Electronics Display of America. “Displaying onscreen information over more than one monitor can significantly increase productivity and LCD displays are ideal for use in multi-monitor configurations with their reduced footprint, space and energy requirements.”

Conducted throughout March and April 2003, the Productivity and Multi-Screen Displays study is based on the responses of one hundred and eight university and non university personnel, who participated in this comparison of single monitor, multi-monitor configurations.

About NEC-Mitsubishi Electronics Display of America, Inc.
Headquartered in Itasca, Ill., NEC-Mitsubishi Electronics Display of America, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tokyo-based NEC-Mitsubishi Electric Visual Systems Corporation, a joint venture company established by NEC Corporation and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. NEC-Mitsubishi Electronics Display began North American operations on July 1, 2000, combining the desktop display monitor divisions of NEC Technologies and Cypress, California-based Mitsubishi Electronics America, Inc. The company incorporates the strengths of NEC’s worldwide leadership in LCD desktop and information displays, Ambix™, and MultiSync technologies, with Mitsubishi’s market leadership in flat aperture grille CRT technology development. NEC-Mitsubishi Electronics Display ranked as the number one best-selling stand-alone LCD monitor brand according to the iSuppli/Stanford Resources Flat Panel Monitrak® Quarterly Report, Q4 '02. For more information, call 1-888-NEC-MITS or visit www.necmitsubishi.com.

ONLY IN KAL-I-FORNIA

Linda Goldston and Lori Aratani, Mercury News, report:

For all the jokes on late-night TV, the circus atmosphere and more than enough candidates to elect governors in all 50 states, California's multimillion-dollar recall drama Tuesday ended like any election -- with a winner.

Except this time the victor was a world-famous movie star.

And Arnold Schwarzenegger threw himself a party like no other.

Members of the staunchly Democratic Shriver family -- including Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sister of President Kennedy -- shared the stage and celebrated the election of a Republican. Jay Leno, host of ``The Tonight Show,'' introduced the winner.

Just two months ago, it was on ``The Tonight Show'' that the actor formerly best known for such action movies as ``Total Recall'' and ``Terminator'' announced he wanted to be governor.

``The critics said, `Well, Arnold can't be an administrator; he's an actor,' '' Leno said. `` `Arnold can't be a governor, he's an actor.' This is an historic night. Apparently we've all been wrong: It is pronounced Kal-i-fornia.''

Schwarzenegger wasn't the first actor to become governor of California -- Ronald Reagan won that title in 1966. But Schwarzenegger is the first actor to replace a governor in a recall election. And for that, he is guaranteed his place in history.

``Turnout was higher than it's been in 25 years,'' said Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at California State University-Sacramento. ``Voters are really angry with politicians. They don't think their politicians are representing them well and Gray Davis became the poster boy for that.''

Some of the candidates had been famous, some were infamous and some were known only to their families and friends. But only Schwarzenegger apparently had the star power to win.

``I think he has the ability to lead the state into a better future,'' said Christina E. Quaglieri, 29, a lawyer in Sacramento who volunteered in Schwarzenegger's campaign and spent election night at a Schwarzenegger for Governor office just blocks from the state Capitol.

``He is a wonderful team with his wife, Maria Shriver. She is a wonderful balance.''

Schwarzenegger was definitely the talk of Los Angeles on Election Day.

Polls had barely opened when people started saying ``Governor Schwarzenegger'' and speculating about what his first official act in office might be.

``He should terminate them all,'' said Sally Mayes, as she sipped coffee at the Coffee Bean on Main Street in Santa Monica. ``He's going to shake things up.''

Tyson Reasby, who was minding the counter at Muscleman International, a body-building and fitness store where Schwarzenegger's picture is proudly displayed by the counter, said if the movie star does a good job, it will teach Californians that they really can't judge a book by its cover -- or a politician by his movie roles.

``But if he messes up, it'll teach them to be more careful about who they vote for in the future.''

As the Schwarzenegger victory became obvious Tuesday night, about 1,000 supporters and 500 members of the media flocked to the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles -- the same hotel where Reagan celebrated his victory in the 1980 presidential race.

For weeks, analysts and registrars said no one knew what to expect Tuesday as voters decided whether they wanted the state to become only the second in the nation to recall a governor.

Sure, there were problems at some polls, but the historic vote was not the catastrophe some had feared.

And in the end, it certainly wasn't the story. The winner was.

Some voters lined up early at neighborhood polls, and others rushed to make the 8 p.m. deadline to have their votes count.

``I've tried to vote because I vote in this precinct, but I haven't had a chance,'' Karen Shivey, 61, a poll worker at the Skyline Health Care Center in central San Jose, said early Tuesday. ``It's been that busy. Ninety-five in one-half hour. You can't leave your post.''

David Mewes, 43, voted at Skyline and was amazed it was ``the first time I've waited in line to vote in 20 years.''

The major candidates took no chances, voting early in the day, with dozens of reporters and television cameras recording their every move.

For campaigns mired in name-calling and accusations of everything from selling out to sexually harassing, some of the candidates ended up putting their faith in God's hands.

Porn star Mary ``Mary Carey'' Cook went to church Tuesday -- to vote.

One of 135 replacement candidates on the ballot, Carey cast her ballot against the recall at the First United Methodist Church in North Hollywood and said that she hadn't been to church for a while. She tried to dress for the setting: She wore a tight pink halter top and short skirt -- to make herself ``look innocent,'' she said.

Gov. Davis and his wife, Sharon, voted at their polling place on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood -- not long after one of the 135 governor wannabes, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, voted at the same place. Flynt, who voted in a gold wheelchair, said the recall is ``bad for democracy.''

Davis voted in the morning and then attended afternoon Mass. He said he offered a prayer to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.

Schwarzenegger and his wife voted just before 9 a.m. in the garage of a Pacific Palisades mansion near their home. They strolled in hand-in-hand and were immediately greeted by the call of one voter, ``Hello, governor.''

The actor-turned-politician said he had no trouble finding his name on the ballot: It was one of the longest names.

The rest is ``up to God now,'' he said.

Mercury News Staff Writer Mary Anne Ostrom and Mercury News wire services contributed to this report.

Hard Times For Holy Cows

Adam Mynott, BBC South Asia correspondent, writes:

The sacred cow, one of the enduring symbols of the Indian capital Delhi, is gradually being moved from the streets.

The authorities have decided there are too many of them and they are not just a nuisance but also a menace.

So for the 36,000 cows wandering around Delhi it is time to go.

And it is not just cows - Delhi's monkeys are also finding that life is getting tougher.

The Delhi authorities on Tuesday began a drive to round up stray cattle.

This is hot and dangerous work.

Under the baking Indian sun I watch eight men struggling with ropes and poles to get one of the stray bovines into the back of a truck.

The cow - a huge, angry animal - does not like the idea and she has got a powerful kick and long sharp horns.

Traffic hazard

A vet employed with the city council, Dr SK Yadav, says it has been a successful morning.

Twenty-five cows have been secured and removed from Delhi's streets.

"Cows are a serious problem. They wander all over the roads, causing serious traffic jams and they are responsible for some serious accidents," says Dr Yadav.

He is right.

On a Delhi market road, some eight cows have gathered, largely because there is a rubbish dump nearby.

They are feeding on the rubbish and wandering to and fro across the road, blocking all traffic.

Clearly, they are a law unto themselves.

The problem has got worse recently as hundreds of illegal dairies have sprung up in Delhi.

Their owners deliberately let them loose so that the animals fend for themselves.

But to many of the thousands of tourists who come to Delhi, cows wandering aimlessly around the city are part of its unique charm.

"The fact that animals are living with people on the streets of Delhi is beautiful. There are cows and dogs, and nobody's shouting at them, nobody's chasing them," one tourist told me.

"It's part of the culture you know. As a traveller you're going to other countries to explore other cultures, so I like it."

But this is a 'culture' that the Delhi civic authorities are no longer happy to promote.

What do they do with the cows after lifting them off the streets

Many of the animals are old - no longer capable of giving milk.

But they are sacred beasts in Hindu religion and no harm must come to them.

So the cows are being taken to compounds on the outskirts of the city. Here they adjust to a diet of hay rather their usual rubbish from the streets of Delhi.

It is estimated that each cow in Delhi has an average about 300 plastic bags in its stomach.

Simian menace

But cows are not the only animals that have attracted the attention of the authorities.

They are also trying to get rid of thousands of monkeys which clamber all over the buildings of the ancient city.

The monkeys, another sacred Hindu creature, usually hang around tourist areas.

They are usually fed bananas by the tourists and when not supplied with food they steal it.

The monkeys are considered a pest. The Government and large companies pay out large sums of money to keep them off their buildings.

Here it takes a thief to catch a thief.

Large black-faced Langur monkeys in the hands of experienced trainers like Vijay Kumar are used to scare off their simian cousins.

"There were lots of monkeys here, they used to attack people and damage the parked cars. People were terrified of them," said Mr Kumar.

"So the company called me in. Now the monkeys have all been scared off by my langur."

The problem with both the cows and the monkeys is what to do with them.

No state in India wants to take the captured animals off Delhi's hands. So they are being held in detention while their future is determined.

iTrike: Solar-Powered Internet Rickshaw

At the Big Green Gathering 2003 (held in the heart of the Mendip Hills, near Cheddar, Somerset, England) on Saturday the 2nd of August 2003, the World's First Solar-Powered Internet Rickshaw was launched across a muddy field amidst an atmosphere of hilarity, surprise and downright disbelief.

Following their their debut event in 2002 at the Big Green Gathering, Wireless.psand.net returned a year later intent on entertaining and educating surprised festival goers and crew alike. Supplying site-wide wireless access using a satellite dish for Internet connectivity had become second nature to the Wireless.psand.net crew. On the look out for a further challenge, they were determined to demonstrate just how "mobile" mobile can get.

To put the event into perspective, the Big Green Gathering is a annual get together of people attempting to provide inspiration and education on alternative approaches to daily living that could lead to a cleaner and healthier future for local and global communities. Conventional distributed mains and fossil fuel generated power are disallowed, leading to a demonstration of inventive technologies that are hopefully less harmful to the planet.

http://mirror.us.psand.net/itrike/

McDonald's Cares About You

Crash on I-90 leaves 8 dead

JEFF KOLKEY and ERIC R. OLSON, The Northwest Herald (Illinois), report:

Eight people were killed and five were in critical condition at area hospitals late Wednesday after a five-vehicle accident on Interstate 90.

The crash occurred just before 3 p.m. on eastbound I-90 as traffic slowed about a half-mile west of the Hampshire-Marengo toll plaza.

In the right lane of traffic, one semitrailer rear-ended the semi in front of it, Illinois State Police said.

The rear truck then caromed into a mini tour bus in the left lane, tearing apart the back end of the bus and killing seven of its 22 passengers on impact, state Trooper Doug Whitmore said.

An eighth passenger died Wednesday evening after being transported to Rockford Memorial Hospital.

"This was a major, major accident," Whitmore said.

Police would not release the names of those killed in the crash until their family members could be notified.

The 22 people aboard the bus were returning to Chicago after visiting Anderson Gardens, a Japanese garden in Rockford, Whitmore said.

They were members of a group called International Women Associates, a fellowship group for long-term visitors to Chicago. The women ranged in age from 40 to older than 70.

Most were in their 60s and 70s, according to area hospitals where they were treated.

The 57-year-old man driving the bus worked for Leisure Pursuits Charters, the Lake Bluff company that owned the bus.

Peter Penner, 56, was driving the lead semitrailer, owned by Penner International, of Steinbeck, Manitoba.

He said he felt his rig get rear-ended by the semitrailer behind him, a rig owned by Frontier Transportation, of Elk Grove Village.

Then Penner turned his head to look out the driver's-side window.

"That bus went flying by me," Penner said.

Seconds later, his truck was rear-ended by a pickup truck with Michigan license plates that was driven by a 67-year-old man.

After he was hit the second time, Penner got out of his rig to see what had happened. Passengers of the bus had been ejected in the crash, and some were lying in a ditch separating eastbound traffic from westbound traffic.

Penner said the driver of the pickup did not appear to be seriously hurt but was trapped inside his vehicle.

A third semitruck was involved in the crash, but police at the scene said it was unclear how it was hit.

Fire departments from Hampshire, Huntley, Marengo, Pingree Grove and Genoa-Kingston used ambulances and helicopters to transport 16 victims to hospitals in Elgin, Rockford and Park Ridge.

Five of the victims were listed in critical condition, with the others in serious or good condition.

The crash was a blur for most of the bus passengers treated Wednesday night at Provena St. Joseph Hospital in Elgin, said Dr. Patrick Connor, the hospital's emergency medical director.

"The only one who recalled what they saw was sitting next to the driver," Connor said. "The one who remembers most said, 'We felt a big bang, ... and we were in a ditch.' "

Of the five patients taken to Provena St. Joseph, two were treated and released Wednesday night. The prognosis for all is good, Connor said.

Shane Christenson, 31, security officer for Provena St. Joseph, said the hospital staff took part in a mock disaster drill last week. The drill concerned a plane hitting a bus at Olson Airport in Plato Center, and Provena St. Joseph was to treat nine victims.

"It was almost the same, then this happens this week," Christenson said. "I was like, 'We just did this.' "

The pickup truck driver, bus driver and six women from the tour bus were taken to Sherman Hospital in Elgin between 4:30 and 5 p.m. Wednesday, said Neal Edelson, Sherman's emergency services director.

"It was just a complete disaster over there," Edelson said. "Most of the survivors were quite near the dead bodies."

Four of the eight victims at Sherman were treated and released Wednesday night. Hospital officials said all probably would survive.

I-90 was closed between Route 20 and Genoa Road for hours as rescuers and investigators worked to clear the scene. The work was difficult, even for the paramedics and firefighters who responded, Pingree Grove Fire Chaplain Paul Meyers said.

"They are holding up really well," Meyers said. "As well as anybody would."

Traffic was backed up for as much as an hour in some places as vehicles were rerouted around the accident. It took about 3.5 hours before traffic began trickling through the Hampshire-Marengo toll plaza again.

"Traffic was horrendous because both lanes were closed," Whitmore said.

Shaw News Service reporters Rob Phillips, Owen Brugh, Geneva White, Dan Chanzit, Aracely Hernandez and Steve Brosinski contributed to this story.

Status of those involved in Wednesday's crash

Rockford Memorial Hospital: One patient flown there by helicopter. The patient later died.

OSF St. Anthony's Hospital in Rockford: A woman flown by helicopter in critical condition.

Provena St. Joseph Hospital in Elgin: Three people were in critical condition, two with neck injuries and chest fractures and one with a torso injury. Two others were treated and released.

Sherman Hospital in Elgin: Eight patients received. A 60-year-old woman was in critical condition with multiple rib fractures, a concussion and a liver injury but is expected to survive. A 40-year-old woman was in serious condition with concussion, a 66-year-old woman was in serious condition, and the pickup driver, a 67-year-old man, was in serious condition. Three women, ages 69, 73 and 78, and the 57-year-old male bus driver were treated and released.

Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge: One patient flown by helicopter, considered critical.

Copyright - 1998-2002 Northwest Herald Newspapers

HOWTO: Write Bad Documentation That Looks Good

clover_kicker, kuro5hin.org, writes:

In every tech's life, there comes a time when management starts to insist on better documentation.

Perhaps a round of layoffs or outsourcing is imminent. Perhaps the simmering disdain between techs and management has escalated into open hatred. Either way, you are clearly on the way out, and management wants to grease the wheels for your successor.

Objectives

You wish to produce documentation that:

will impress your management, and facilitate your remaining time in that job.

will not substantially help your replacement(s).

does not betray obvious signs of sabotage.

General Principles

Writing good documentation is hard.

Your management does not understand how complicated the situation really is.

Your manager sincerely believes that more documentation is better.

As the amount of documentation increases, so does the effort required to maintain it.

To fully understand any situation, you need to know the 5 W's, i.e. Who, What, Where, When, and Why.

In general, documenting "what" is not nearly as valuable as documenting "how" and/or "why". "What" can be discovered with a little effort, but the reasons "why" are often obscure and complicated. Your most valuable asset in your current job might be your detailed understanding of why everything is set up the way it is.

Complex systems generally have several interdependent components. Often, the relationship between these components is a tricky affair, finely tuned after months or years of tweaking.

Concrete suggestions

More is not better

It is easy to produce impressive quantities of paper by documenting the very obvious and/or completely useless.

Spend lots of time on the appearance and presentation of your documentation. Your management is easily distracted by shiny things, and will not realize that your binders contain information that could easily be recreated by anyone.

Creating bad documentation is time consuming, and makes you look very busy. You can use your documentation as an excuse to avoid real work, or perhaps to con a few more days of employment.

One insidious consequence of overly detailed documentation is the maintenance required. Recording trivial changes is very time consuming. However, unmaintained documents quickly become inaccurate and misleading, arguably worse then no documentation at all.

Example 1

A sysadmin could make a binder for each server with serial #s, driver diskettes, partition images burnt onto CD, etc. Include lots of obvious hardware and software settings, i.e IRQs, driver revisions, patchlevels, IP addrs, MAC addrs, etc.

Routers and switches should also get a binder with appropriate h/w and configuration information.

A programmer might bulk up documentation with information about trivial internal functions and macros.

Never tell "why"

Never describe what problems you've encountered, or how you solved them.

Do not explain what task each program or machine is doing. Do not explain the interactions of any systems, or which programs/machines depend on other programs or machines.

A programmer should never call attention to global variables, or functions with side-effects.

Example 2

In the past, there have been problems with running out of a particular resource (disk/RAM/bandwidth/whatever) on a particular machine. You have written a script to help predict when this problem is about to occur.

do:

Document the existence of this script

Document what inputs the script requires

Document what output the script produces

do not:

Document what condition the script was written to detect, or the consequences of that condition.

extra credit:

Modify the script to examine additional machines and/or resources. This will help obscure the true purpose of the script.

Parameterize the script so that it can examine several different machines and/or resources. Make the default action something plausible but irrelevant, and manually provide sensible parameters when you invoke the script. If your script is a cron job, make it produce a few extra reports every day. The more automagic logs one receives, the less attention is paid to them.

An ounce of disorganization is worth a pound of confusion

You can achieve maddening results by carefully fragmenting your documentation.

A well-written "principles of operation" document that describes the big picture is worth a million pages of detailed trivia. Your "special" documentation should therefore meticulously detail the trees, while scrupulously ignoring the forest.

Example 3

Would it be more frustrating to learn Unix system administration by only reading man pages, or an overview which referred to specific man pages where appropriate

Which would cause more grey hairs

A network diagram listing all servers, and their IP addresses

A set of detailed documents, one per server. Each server document consistently records the IP address on page 13.

Which of these documents is worth the paper it is printed on

A 1 page document listing all global variables

A large document with a detailed entry for each variable, listed alphabetically.

Theoretically, your trouble ticket system contains all the information you've been trying to obfuscate. In practice, all such systems exemplify the flaws we've discussed: poor organization, too much irrelevant detail and too little discussion of "why".

At best, your trouble ticket database is full of sketchy problem descriptions and meaninglessly vague resolution fields. More likely, the ticket database is an incoherent work of speculative fiction that doesn't contain records for many changes.

Afterword:

Most technical documentation suffers from the above flaws without even trying to be evil. Commercial software documentation is execrable, and in-house documentation is worse, especially when produced in accordance with a formalized documentation standard.

The above article is a satire meant to help you write good documentation. Honest.

Schoolboy's Photo Amazes Nasa

A schoolboy has impressed experts at US space agency Nasa after capturing a rare picture of a meteor burning out above his home town [Pencoed] in south Wales. (BBC)

Jonathan Burnett, 15, was taking snaps of his friends performing skateboarding stunts near his home in Pencoed near Bridgend when a bright light in the sky caught his attention.

He took two photographs of the fiery ball before it burned out and rushed home to show his parents.

Later, he e-mailed the picture to Nasa asking for an explanation and was amazed to discover that the space experts were so impressed with his snap they had published it on their website.

His father Paul explained: "He has a digital camera and was out taking some pictures of his friends on the street.

"A little boy ran over and shouted 'look the sun has exploded' and Jonathan turned around and managed to take two pictures of it.

"None of us knew what it was and we thought that maybe it was a plane that had exploded.

"We were really keen to find out what it was, and so without us realising it, Jonathan had emailed the picture to experts at Nasa to ask for an explanation.

"The next thing we knew that they had used the picture on their website," he said.

Jonathan, who attends Pencoed Comprehensive School, said: "It was such a coincidence that we happened to be in the street at the time.

"I was trying out my new camera to take pictures of my friend who was doing a skateboarding trick.

"I took the first picture and then about two minutes later I took the second one before it burned out.

"One of our first thoughts was that it was the sun reflecting off the clouds.

"Everyone in school is amazed - most of my friends believe me but there are some who said they don't believe me.

"I am really interested in photography - but I don't think I will ever manage to take another picture like that," he added.

On its website Nasa described the teenager's picture as a "sofa-sized rock came hurtling into the nearby atmosphere of planet Earth and disintegrated".

"By diverting his camera, he was able to document this rare sky event and capture one of the more spectacular meteor images yet recorded. Roughly one minute later, he took another picture of the dispersing meteor trial.

"Bright fireballs occur over some place on Earth nearly every day.

"A separate bolide, likely even more dramatic, struck India only a few days ago."

CIA Mind Control Documents Released

WantToKnow.info reports:

The CIA has declassified over 18,000 pages of documents on extensive mind control programs carried out since the early 1950s. [..]

A declassified CIA document dated 7 Jan 1953 describes the experimental creation of multiple personality in two 19-year old girls. "These subjects have clearly demonstrated that they can pass from a fully awake state to a deep H [hypnotic] controlled state by telephone, by receiving written matter, or by the use of code, signal, or words, and that control of those hypnotized can be passed from one individual to another without great difficulty. It has also been shown by experimentation with these girls that they can act as unwilling couriers for information purposes." (CIA Mori ID 190684, 1/7/53)
 
Another declassified document dated 10 Feb 1954 describes an experiment of relevance to the creation of unsuspecting assassins: "Miss [whited out] was instructed (having previously expressed a fear of firearms) that she would use every method at her disposal to awaken Miss [whited out] (now in a deep hypnotic sleep). Failing this, she would pick up a pistol nearby and fire it at Miss [whited out]. She was instructed that her rage would be so great that she would not hesitate to "kill" [whited out] for failing to awaken. Miss [whited out] carried out these suggestions to the letter including firing the (unloaded) gun at [whited out] and then proceeded to fall into a deep sleep. After proper suggestions were made, both were awakened. Miss [whited out] expressed absolute denial that the foregoing sequence had happened." (CIA Mori ID 190691, 2/10/54)

These are just two of the many disturbing experiments which reveal incredible abuse of power on unsuspecting citizens for over 50 years now. To order these documents directly from the government, go to www.wanttoknow.info/mindcontrol10pg#ciadocs. The 18,000 pages of documents released are only the tip of the iceberg. There are many thousands of pages that the CIA refuses to release. There are even more documents that were ordered destroyed by CIA Director Richard Helms in 1973 when he was tipped off that there was going to be a Congressional investigation into the CIA's mind control activities.
 
For more on these and other eye-opening facts, go to the two-page mind control summary at www.wanttoknow.info/mindcontrol. Or even better, go straight to the information-packed 10-page summary at www.wanttoknow.info/mindcontrol10pg. To understand why these facts aren't getting extensive media coverage, and for ideas on what we can do about it, go to www.wanttoknow.info. If these facts were reported in headline news where they belong, caring citizens would be astounded and demand to know more. This has not happened, which is why we feel compelled to provide them here.
 
The entire wanttoknow.info website is designed both to provide a concise, reliable introduction to incredibly important information that is being hidden from us, and to inspire us to work together for a better world. You can help create the possibility of a brighter future right now by educating yourself on these vital issues, and by forwarding this message to your friends and colleagues and asking them to do the same. As we spread this news across the land, public pressure will eventually force the media to cover these vital issues. Then we will begin to see many positive changes to prevent these kinds of abuses from ever happening again. Thank you for caring. Together we can and will create a better world for ourselves and our children.
 
The wanttoknow.info team is a group of dedicated researchers from around the world who compile and summarize important, verifiable facts and information being hidden from the public. You can reach us at
 
.

5yr Old Girl Makes bong in Class

EDITH BEVIN, (Australian) Northern Territory News, reports:

A five-year-old Territory girl shocked teachers when she showed her class how to make a bong out of a Coke bottle during a ``show and tell'' session.

The incident took place at a primary school in Darwin's northern suburbs.

The revelation comes amid mounting concerns over drug use among Territory primary school students.

At least two instances have been reported to the Education Department of children aged between five and 12 being caught with drugs at school.

In one case the drug was amphetamine. Teachers have indicated this may be the tip of the iceberg.

``The little girl showing how to make a bong was the most in-your-face example of drug culture among primary school students I've heard of,'' one teacher said.

``It's not unheard of that primary school children will be found with drugs at school,'' the teacher said.

``Usually it's just a bit of dope _ they've probably nicked it from their mum's purse and brought it along to show off.

``I've never heard of dealing at a primary school here.''

But dealing at Territory schools is not unheard of, police say.

The NT Drug Enforcement Unit has run operations at high schools targeting dealing on school grounds.

Police would not name the schools involved.

The Northern Territory News has learned a member of the NT Police has been seconded to the Education Department to work on their new drug policy and protocols.

``The drug education policy is under revision to ensure it accurately reflects modern trends,'' the spokesperson said.

Students with drugs at school are reported to the school-based constable and are subject to suspension.

A Department of Education spokesman said students being found with drugs at Territory schools was rare.

The spokesman said prosecutions against students are not always pursued.

``Depending on the incident, the constable may refer the matter to the police for further action,'' the spokesman said.

``Usually, the student involved would be suspended for a period determined by the school, taking into consideration the seriousness of the incident.

``The student would also receive counselling and would be required to successfully undertake a re-entry interview before returning to the school once the period of suspension has passed.''

2yr Old Survives Being Home Alone Nearly Three Weeks

MIAMI (Reuters) - A 2-year-old girl whose mother was in jail survived alone in an apartment for nearly three weeks on ketchup, mustard and food she found in the refrigerator and kitchen cupboards, Jacksonville, Florida police said on Tuesday.
 
The child's father found the toddler on Monday, draped in a towel and sitting in an infant's bathtub in her mother's apartment, police said.

(via Rense.com)

Police have charged the mother, Dakeysha Telita Lee, 20, with child abuse for not telling them she had left the girl alone at home when she was arrested on Sept. 10 on an aggravated battery charge.
 
The child, whose name was not released, was recovering from malnutrition and Florida's Department of Children and Families, the state child welfare agency, was investigating the case to determine where to place the girl.
 
"She had subsisted on mustard, ketchup, dried pasta. She cleared out the lower cabinets looking for food as well as the refrigerator," Jacksonville Sheriff's Office spokesman Ken Jefferson said.
 
"Everything was on the bed in the bedroom. Obviously she had found other things than the ketchup to eat."
 
The child's father, Ogden Lee, told the Florida Times-Union newspaper he had been trying to contact Dakeysha Lee, from whom he is separated, for two weeks, not knowing she was in jail.
 
He finally tried the jail on Sunday and talked to his estranged wife, who told him the girl was with neighbors. After knocking on doors at her apartment complex without success, he had a manager let him into the mother's apartment on Monday and found the girl, dirty and covered with dried ketchup.
 
"She grabbed me and wouldn't let go of me," he told the newspaper. "It really is a miracle how good a shape my daughter is in. I don't know how she did it."
 
Police said there was no evidence anyone had visited the apartment during the time the child was alone.
 
"The child is safe and in our care," said Pattie Mallon, an official with the Department of Children and Families in Jacksonville. "We are in awe of her spirit to survive and we are making every effort to ensure her safety and well being."
 
 
Copyright © 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

3G Mobile Signals Can Cause Nausea, Headache -Study

:

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Radio signals for the next generation of mobile phone services can cause headaches and nausea, according to a study conducted by three Dutch ministries.

The study, the first of its kind, compared the impact of radiation from base stations used for the current mobile telephone network with that of base stations for new third generation (3G) networks for fast data transfer, which will enable services such as video conferencing on a mobile device.

A base station, which usually covers a "cell" area of several square kilometers (miles), transmits signals to mobile phones with an electromagnetic field.

"If the test group was exposed to third generation base station signals there was a significant impact ... They felt tingling sensations, got headaches and felt nauseous," a spokeswoman for the Dutch Economics Ministry said.

There was no negative impact from signals for current mobile networks.

However, cognitive functions such as memory and response times were boosted by both 3G signals and the current signals, the study found. It said people became more alert when they were exposed to both.

Government ministers responsible for Economic Affairs, Health and Telecommunications said follow-up research was needed to confirm the findings as well as to look at any longer-term health effects and biological causes.

They will also discuss the study with the European Commission (news - web sites), the spokeswoman said.

The double-blind laboratory tests -- meaning no one in the survey knew if a 3G-like base station was actually transmitting signals -- exposed test subjects to expected levels of average radiation for 3G networks when they become commercial.

The GSM Association, a global organization of mobile telecommunications operators, said it was studying the report and could not comment.

The study, conducted by the Dutch technological research institute TNO, was the first to look for an impact of mobile telephones on well-being. It was also the first study to find a statistically significant negative impact from 3G base stations.

Previous research on a negative health impact of mobile phones, mostly second-generation, has been inconclusive.

Existing research gives no scientific evidence that second-generation phones cause brain tumors, while a long-term study by the International Agency on Research on Cancer is not expected to yield results before 2004.

Previous research did find an impact on cognitive functions, which was also found in the Dutch survey. But TNO noted that earlier studies always measured the impact of cellphones held close to the head, causing high fields of radiation close to the ear and warming of the brain.

TNO's study used lower a dose of radiation to mimic base station signals rather than handsets.

Handsets emit stronger radiation when they are used, while base stations transmit more constant levels of radio signals, exposing everyone within range.

Napolean Bush

Musician 'Hears Mushrooms Singing'

The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

(DPA) -- A noted Czech orchestral composer has revealed a secret to his success: the ability to hear mushrooms sing.
 
Composer Vaclav Halek told the Mlada fronta Dnes newspaper that he copies the beautiful music emanating from all sorts of fungal forms that he finds while walking in the woods.

Just as other people carry baskets to gather mushrooms, Mr Halek said he takes a pencil and paper to the forest to collect songs he claims to hear rising from individual or groups of fungi. "I simply record music that a mushroom sings to me," he said.
 
Mr Halek has composed about 2,000 tunes and one symphony based on the melodies heard while lying beside edible or poisonous mushrooms in the quiet forest. He's been listening to fungi for 20 years, and has used the music for his numerous film and theatre scores.
 
"Not all of them carry the same tune," Mr Halek said. "There are tones and melodies that only toadstools and mushrooms make, so that together they cannot be used to create a composition."
 
He also claims to hear music coming from rocks and trees but prefers mushroom melodies.
 
Copyright © 2003 The Sydney Morning Herald.