Blog Heap o'Links for February 2009

Another U.S. soldier on active duty in Iraq is joining a challenge to President Obama's eligibility to be commander-in-chief, citing WND's report on 1st Lt. Scott Easterling, who has agreed to be a plaintiff in a lawsuit over the issue, as his inspiration. "I was inspired by 1LT Easterling's story and am writing you to inform you that I would like to be added as a plaintiff against Obama as well if you feel it would help your case," said the soldier, identified for this report only as a reservist now on active duty in Iraq.

we have to recognize that the way people (young, old, and in between) are communicating is evolving rapidly. Ten years ago, Twitter didn't exist, cell phones weren't ubiquitous, and email was recently crowned king of business communications. ... For kids, MySpace, Facebook, and even just IM are certainly about creating an online identity, but are much more simply about talking to each other. Remember when 3-way calling and call waiting were a big deal? Screw call waiting. Now kids can have synchronous or asynchronous, private or shared, in-depth conversations with all of their friends at once. Remarkably, they manage the data quite well. ...

Anthropologists have uncovered ancient fossil footprints in Kenya dating back 1.5 million years, the oldest evidence yet that our ancestors walked like present-day humans

The website's price spotters pinpoint a Sinclair station in Bartlesville, Okla., as having what might be the nation's lowest price -- $1.46 per gallon — on Friday

Starting this week, Dell's 240,000 square-foot Oklahoma City campus will be powered by 100-percent wind energy, boosting the company's green power use by 35 percent nationwide and by 20 percent globally. But the PC maker says it has set its sights on a far more ambitious goal -- to become the 'greenest' technology company on the planet!

Seventeen private water wells have tested positive for E. coli bacteria near a northeastern Oklahoma town where an E. coli outbreak last summer killed one man and sickened hundreds.... Health officials have said a restaurant called the Country Cottage was the source of the outbreak in Locust Grove, but Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson said this month that it could have been the result of contamination from nearby poultry farms....

A Seattle-area PC seller will offer free Windows 7 upgrades to customers who buy new Vista-powered machines starting next week, beating Microsoft and its major hardware partners to the free-upgrade punch by months.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is sending strong signals that President Obama - who as a candidate said states should be allowed to make their own rules on medical marijuana - will end raids on pot dispensaries in California....

"As an active-duty officer in the United States Army, I have grave concerns about the constitutional eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama to hold the office of president of the United States," wrote Scott Easterling in a "to-whom-it-may-concern" letter. Obama "has absolutely refused to provide to the American public his original birth certificate, as well as other documents which may prove or disprove his eligibility," Easterling wrote. "In fact, he has fought every attempt made by concerned citizens in their effort to force him to do so."

Violence from Mexican drug cartels has spilled over into Texas. , state Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw said Monday. "Yes, absolutely it has occurred; there's no question about it...." "Anything that involves cartel activity that impacts Texans on this side of the border is, by definition, spillover violence," he said after the meeting. McCraw told lawmakers, though, that Texas has a contingency plan to deal with large-scale violence and that local, state and federal agencies are working to prevent that from happening.

Google's web-based email service, Gmail, has crashed this morning, leaving millions of users from Britain to Australia unable to send and receive messages.

Three former Atlanta police officers, who shot dead a 92-year-old woman at her home in a botched drug raid and then lied about it to cover their tracks, were all sentenced to prison terms on Tuesday. The shooting of Kathryn Johnston at her home in Atlanta in November 2006 raised national questions about police corruption and brutality, as well as civil rights abuses. It led to the disbandment and reform of the city's narcotics squad.

Published since 1940, this venerable "funny animal" comic book has enjoyed 700 issues over 70 years. WDC&S is an important title for many reasons — including the fact that it had the honor of being the home of hundreds of the first and original stories about Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Donald's nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie and the dreaded Beagle Boys written by Carl Barks.

IDW's successful Complete Dick Tracy series is getting bigger…and better. CEO Ted Adams, who initiated the series and edited its first six volumes, has announced that Tracy is being folded into IDW's Library of American Comics imprint, alongside Terry and the Pirates, Little Orphan Annie, and other classic newspaper strip titles.

This October, IDW is publishing the first of five volumes collecting the entire run of Berkeley Breathed's Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip "Bloom County." Edited by Scott Dunbier and designed by Eisner Award-winner Dean Mullaney, these five hardcover collections will be part of IDW's Library of American Comics Imprint. The daily "Bloom County" strip started up in December of 1980, not long after Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States, and Breathed developed a loyal following using the quirky denizens of the fictional Bloom County to comment on the politics of the time. CBR News caught up with Breathed to get the details on this definitive collection of "Bloom County."

Earlier this week Village Voice Media suspended publication of all its comic strips across its entire chain of alternative weekly papers in a cost-cutting move.

Hey, America: This is what you'll lose, once the last bloated newspapers close forever: People like this, whining about the Most Important Thing Ever, a soggy newsprint version of yesterday's wire copy and weeks-old syndicate features about "winter vegetables," wrapped around a Big Lots! circular and six or seven pages of foreclosure notices in the back, along with a few "I HEREBY REFUSE TO PAY MY DEBT" classifieds, where the jobs/real estate ads used to be. Oh god.

Forget paper and wave goodbye to inky fingers. Simon Usborne discovers the hottest comics are strictly online

Marvel held their fourth quarter/year-end earnings call this morning, where they discussed their financial performance for 2008 and gave a couple of updates for their upcoming film slate.

Stan Lee's multimedia plans from the '90s have come back to haunt him once again, as shareholders of Stan Lee Media, Inc. on Monday filed suit against Lee, his wife, Marvel Comics, Marvel Chairman Issac Perlmutter, and former head of Marvel Studios Avi Arad for over $750 million — one half the proceeds from Spider-Man, X-Men and Iron Man. The suit claims that Permutter, Lee, Arad and Marvel denied the shareholders of Stan Lee Media to their rights in the ownership of 50% of the characters and properties created by Lee, including Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man and dozens of others. The shareholders claim that Lee transferred all of his interest in the characters he created for Marvel to Stan Lee Media in 1998.

The space agency's first carbon dioxide-monitoring satellite took off on a rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California this morning, but after blasting through the Earth's atmosphere it fell short of its orbiting height and plummeted back towards the sea.

It was mentioned that Ernest William Barnes book: Scientific Theory and Religion was used for source material for The Urantia Book. Here are some ideas that may indicate a connection. This does not attempt to show that The Urantia Book was authored by humans, but that Celestials used the best available human sources. It gives an idea what the thoughts were at that time.

Police and federal agents have rescued 10 child prostitutes and arrested 35 people in Western Washington as part of a nationwide sweep aimed at curbing the sexual exploitation of children.... ationwide, "Operation Cross Country III" took 48 child prostitutes into protective custody and police and agents in 29 cities — including Seattle, Everett and Tacoma — arrested 571 people for investigation of a number of state and federal charges involving the domestic trafficking of children for sex. ...

In the four years since a Texas woman was killed when a piece of concrete fell from an interstate bridge and crashed through her windshield, more than two dozen other people have filed similar claims against the state. Although no deaths were reported, information provided to The Associated Press under an open records request shows 26 people have filed claims against the state involving falling concrete since Osborn's fatal accident in June 2004.

[Two great lines in this article:] If you ever put any content on the Internet, expect it to stay there. [and] fighting the Internet is as futile as trying to wade into the ocean and control the tides.

The 20-gauge shotgun an 11-year-old Pennsylvania boy used to blow away his father's pregnant fiance was a Christmas present from his gun-loving dad, cops and family revealed Sunday. ... Jordan is being charged as an adult in the killing of his stepmother-to-be in her bed Friday morning in their Wampum, Pa., home. She was eight months pregnant. Jordan's lawyer, Dennis Elisco, said he plans to ask for the boy to be released on bail Monday and have the case moved to juvenile court. Elisco says there's no clear motive for the shooting, and he maintains his client's innocence.

"Adam@Home" cartoonist Brian Basset is getting a helping hand from former Universal Press Syndicate cartoonist Rob Harrell of "Big Top" fame. Beginning with the Feb. 23 "Adam@ Home" comic, Harrell will take over the strip's art and will assist in its production. Basset's hoping the move will free up more time to dedicate to his other comic strip, "Red & Rover."

Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala, has been officially announced, and promises to change, among other things, the one problem keeping Linux from world domination: the poop-colored desktop theme.

Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has warned. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are said to shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centred. [Yeah, sure. Think of the children! Think of the childreennnnnn!]

1977 public service film from the House Committee on Un-American Activities informing the country of the Keene Act - a law passed to eliminate the costumed menace and to put an end to masked vigilantism.

An alert citizen, quick police response and an emergency run for chicken nuggets made for a joyous reunion Sunday on the Northwest Side. Police brought 4-year-old Gael Dominguez back to his home in the 2400 block of North Lowell almost four hours after he was reported missing.

Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President say that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush's eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort. They expressed disappointment that Obama's Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration's bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.

In addition to Boxee, Hulu also has pulled its content from the CBS-owned TV.com, sparking a push-back from TV.com, which doesn't want to say good-bye so quickly. Could the moves by Fox and NBC-owned Hulu be the first in a war over digital distribution of television content?

Exercising one's first amendment right to freedom of religion can be a tricky thing, especially when your form of worship consists of lighting up a joint in the name of God. Just ask Norman Hutchinson of Mexico, Maine. Hutchinson is a member of the Religion of Jesus Church, a Hawaiian-based faith that not only encourages "cannabis sacraments," but mandates it.

[This site is not what one might presume the domain name means; it is, rather, a site for Intelligent Design believers.]

Autonomous military robots that will fight future wars must be programmed to live by a strict warrior code, or the world risks untold atrocities at their steely hands. The stark warning — which includes discussion of a "Terminator"-style scenario in which robots turn on their human masters — is part of a hefty report funded by and prepared for the U.S. Navy's high-tech and secretive Office of Naval Research. The report, the first serious work of its kind on military robot ethics, envisages a fast-approaching era where robots are smart enough to make battlefield decisions that are at present the preserve of humans. Eventually, it notes, robots could come to display significant cognitive advantages over Homo sapiens soldiers.

last night the possibility of an extraordinary discovery had oceanographers and geophysicists captivated. ... The site lies 620 miles off the west coast of Africa near the Canary Islands - a location for Atlantis seemingly suggested by the ancient philosopher Plato. ... Last night Dr Charles Orser, curator of historical archaeology at New York State University - and one of the world's leading authorities on Atlantis - called it "fascinating".

Uniting Urantia mini wiki … where students of the Urantia Papers can come together and share thoughts and encouragement.

Attorney General Eric Holder described the United States Wednesday as a nation of cowards on matters of race, saying most Americans avoid discussing unresolved racial issues. In a speech to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month, Holder said the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives. "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards," said Holder, nation's first black attorney general. [Oh, shut up.]

…when President Obama announced his first troop deployment to Afghanistan, he did so quietly in the form of a paper statement from a press secretary after he signed the largest stimulus package in U.S. history -- a contrast to President Bush's announcing his troop surge for the war in Iraq before a prime-time audience on TV. "We got a paper statement rather than a speech because this is not a surge," said retired Maj. Gen. Ret. Bob Scales. "This is surge lite."

Broward County judge denied bond to a woman spotted by a Publix shopper pouring an unspecified black liquid into jars of baby food inside the grocery store on the evening of Feb. 12.

TelTech Systems is offering mobile telephone users the power to unmask callers who block their numbers or names from being displayed. The US-based firm launched a TrapCall service this month with an online posting thanking its development team and declaring "Get ready for the site to go ballistic." To use the service, people register mobile telephone numbers at a TrapCall.com website without having to download software to devices. Calls from unidentified sources can then be bounced to TelTech computers, which reveal points of origin.

all nonrefinery and nonpipeline jobs at the Ponca City refinery will be relocated to Bartlesville, Houston or other field locations.

"Our victim was leaving the St. Luke's Church around 1:27 p.m. when two subjects ran by and jerked the purse out of her hand," Woods told the E-E. "The purse was found two blocks away with nothing taken out of it."

...appeared to be well-fed... family was allowed to keep four cats and they promised to give away the dogs.

A 14-year-old Wisconsin girl who refused to stop texting during a high school math class was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct,

did not come from an airplane... made of cast iron..

just as the wife and the mistress planned... The deputy on scene noted that Katherine wasn't injured — and that Warren had several scratches on his face, neck and chest. But because Warren was the first one to get physical, he was deemed the primary aggressor in the fight.

You'll be able to charge any new mobile phone from the same universal charger beginning on January 1, 2012. -- Except the iPhone.

stopped his car to answer a call of nature - and watched in horror as it slid over a cliff... wife and children... in the passenger seats... all escaped unharmed.

Former Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean left their cells in solitary confinement to reunite with their families in El Paso, Texas, today. ... After serving two years in federal prison in solitary confinement for shooting a fleeing Mexican drug smuggler who had brought 750 pounds of marijuana into the U.S., Ramos and Compean are being released into home confinement until March 20. The news came only two weeks after the Federal Bureau of Prisons told WND they could be eligible to finish sentences at home.

ConocoPhillips says it plans to relocate 750 jobs out of Ponca City within two years... 180 going to Houston, and the rest to Bartlesville...

stone carvers got George Washington's words wrong on the landmark Manhattan Supreme Courthouse

A House committee passed a bill Monday intended to stop the "silent auction" of children by cracking down on attorneys who sell and traffic children up for adoption.

captured and tackled by a woman 50 pounds lighter than him. The woman we are told used a wedgie

Disney is creating a film with an African-American princess... animated musical "The Princess and The Frog," is the first princess introduced by Disney since Mulan in 1998.

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections has refused to allow Wingspread Christian Ministries to send prison inmates Bibles, other religious materials and small cash gifts around the holidays. The ministry has sued in federal court.

Federal investigators have joined the search for an Arkansas boy who vanished nearly a week ago, and are asking for the public to come forward with any information related to the case.

A former Top Gun said Sunday he was ordered to shoot down a massive UFO over Norwich, England, 50 years ago.

Aliens may be living among us, but we wouldn't know it because they'd be microbes that do not have the standard biochemistry of Earth-dwelling organisms.

"Mrs. Eidson made it look so easy and fun. Who wouldn't want this job?"

SANTA FE, N.M. — Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon and once served New Mexico in the U.S. Senate, doesn't believe that humans are causing global warming.

British experts said the breakthrough raises disturbing ethical questions about what makes us human. They also warned it could have damaging psychological consequences, preventing those who take it from learning from their mistakes.

Forensic experts will soon be able to reconstruct facial features and skin just by reading DNA, U.S. scientists said.

Ranging from fun and quirky to classy and romantic, here are a few date options available in the area

The Animal Humane Society says all of the 120 cats removed from a St. Anthony mobile home had to be euthanized. Spokeswoman Deb Balzer says the cats had diseases ranging from feline AIDS and herpes to upper respiratory infections and ringworm. She says the cats, which had been living in a 500-square-foot mobile home, were "very damaged animals."

In order to see things in 3D each eye must see a slightly different picture. This is done in the real world by your eyes being spaced apart so each eye has its own slightly different view. The brain then puts the two pictures together to form one 3D image that has depth to it.

In what legislators are calling a first, one-fifth of the Oklahoma House voted Feb. 11 to strike from the record a prayer offered on the chamber floor by the Rev. Scott H. Jones, pastor of Cathedral of Hope UCC-Oklahoma City. ... Jones is a constituent of McAffrey's Oklahoma City district. ...believe the objection was raised because of their sexuality. Jones leads the largest predominantly LGBT congregation in Oklahoma City and is himself gay. McAffrey is Oklahoma's only openly gay legislator.

Climate alarmists declare that man's energy use is increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and climate warming (one degree Fahrenheit over the last century). They further project that Earth's temperature will increase dramatically in the near future and lead to world catastrophe. Worldwide warming of this magnitude would be a radical and unlikely deviation from the previous century and has little scientific merit. Temperature proxy measurements going back hundreds of thousands of years through many ice ages and warm periods indicate atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration to be a result of temperature change and not a cause.

Marijuana is California's largest cash crop. It's valued at $14 billion annually, or nearly twice the value of the state's grape and vegetable crops combined, according to government statistics. Indeed, a recent report pegged marijuana as two-thirds of the economy of Mendocino County, a ganja hotbed north of San Francisco. That's not surprising—it costs $400 to grow a pound of pot that can sell for $6,000 on the street. But the state doesn't receive any revenue from its cash cow. Instead, it spends billions of dollars enforcing laws pegged at shutting down the industry and inhibiting marijuana's adherents. Of course, there's a reason for that. Marijuana's social costs may include addiction and rehabilitation treatment and lost productivity. Yet these are minute compared with the extensive social costs of alcohol or tobacco.

Baby-faced Alfie, who is 13 but looks more like eight, became a father four days ago when his girlfriend Chantelle Steadman gave birth to 7lb 3oz Maisie Roxanne. He told how he and Chantelle, 15, decided against an abortion after discovering she was pregnant.

The world's biggest record companies sued college students, a 12-year-old girl and a dead woman and still failed to stamp out music piracy. Now they're turning to Internet service providers. Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group Corp., EMI Group and Sony Music Entertainment have gained leverage through court and government actions to pressure ISPs into warning customers not to steal music -- in some cases with a threat to cut service. Crowded networks are helping to soften U.S. and European access providers' resistance to working with record companies.

An artist who created a famous image of Barack Obama before he became president sued The Associated Press on Monday, asking a judge to find that his use of an AP photo in creating the poster did not violate copyright law. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan said street artist Shepard Fairey did not violate the copyright of the April 2006 photograph because he dramatically changed the nature of the image.

told dispatchers he was "unhappy with his order" ... could not explain why he resorted to calling 911 for a "civil dilemma."

…accessing the names and Social Security numbers of 45,000 employees and retirees. The agency said in a statement Monday that two of the 48 files on the breached computer server contained personal information about employees and retires who were on the FAA's rolls as of the first week of February 2006. … not connected to the operation of the air traffic control system….

Microsoft warned enterprise customers this week that the migration path from XP to Windows 7 won't be any easier than it is to Vista, and offered recommendations for how companies can move from older versions of Windows to one of its newer client OSes.

Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske has accepted a job as the nation's drug czar in the Obama administration.... Kerlikowske, who was appointed Seattle chief in 2000 by then-Mayor Paul Schell, had worked the previous two years as deputy director of the Justice Department's community-oriented policing division during the Clinton administration. Sources said Kerlikowske established ties in Washington, D.C., and has a strong relationship with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who served as deputy attorney general during the Clinton years....

In June of last year, Louisiana became the first state to pass what has become known as an "academic freedom" law. In the past, fights over evolution took place at the local school board level, but academic freedom proponents specifically target state legislatures.

There are no big scandals. Darwin was squeaky clean — a homebody (once he returned from the HMS Beagle voyage) and good husband — hardly the rapscallion image you might have of someone who sailed the seas for five years as a young man and later developed a theory that has rarely ceased to stir controversy since it was published 150 years ago. However, there are some strange facts about Darwin: Stinky feet... Iffy on marriage... Christian, then agnostic... Sickly life...

"Darwin" will be the most comprehensive exhibit ever mounted on the British naturalist, whose ideas transformed biology and sparked a religious debate that is playing out in courtrooms, statehouses and school board meetings across the United States.

For the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth (February 12, 2009), National Geographic News asked leading scientists for their picks of the most important fossils that show evolution in action—seven of which are presented here, starting with this "fishapod." Discovered in Arctic Canada in 2004, 375 million-year-old Tiktaalik had not only gills and scales but traits of a tetrapod (four-legged land animal), including limblike fins, ribs, a flexible neck, and a croc-shaped head.

The owner locked the car doors and refused to come out when a constable tried to serve her a warrant ... Two puppies and 20 dogs were taken to a shelter until a judge decides who gets custody.... "The ammonia level in the vehicle was 23 parts per million even after the doors had been opened for several minutes...."

More than 100 chickens, rabbits, rodents, iguanas and tarantulas have been removed from a two-bedroom Buffalo apartment by authorities who needed three vans to cart off the menagerie.

A commercial satellite owned by a U.S. company was destroyed in a collision with a defunct Russian military satellite in what NASA said was the first such accident in orbit, raising new concerns about the dangers of space debris. The crash, which happened Tuesday in low-earth orbit, involved one of the satellites owned by closely held Iridium Satellite LLC and a crippled Russian military satellite that apparently stopped functioning years ago.... The collision created two large clouds of debris floating roughly 480 miles above Siberia, and prompted space scientists and engineers to assess the likelihood of further collisions....

The mother of the woman who gave birth to octuplets has slammed her daughter's actions as 'unconscionable' and said that the single mother has no way to support the babies and her six other children.

French fighter planes were unable to take off after military computers were infected by a computer virus

A two-decade-old state law that grants authorities the power to seize property used in a crime is wielded by some agencies against people who are never charged with, much less convicted, of a crime.

A Polish student reported his mother to police for psychological torture after she told him to take a bath and tidy his room.

Three Toledo-area people were killed in a chain-reaction crash at a collision scene on I-475/U.S. 23 near the Ohio Turnpike just before daybreak Thursday, and another person was critically injured when she jumped off a bridge to avoid being struck by a vehicle

OKLAHOMA CITY: A teenager who sneaked onto an oil well site to play on the equipment got tangled in a piece of machinery and a doctor had to amputate his left arm to free him.... The 17-year-old boy and his friend jumped an 8-foot (2 1/2-meter) fence Sunday to play with a pump jack, a common piece of oil field equipment that rocks up and down to lift oil out of a well. He turned on the machine to ride it but became entangled in one of its moving parts, and his friend couldn't shut it off...

Ever thought you might need to slip quietly off the radar? Meet Frank Ahearn, America's leading skip tracer, and now — for the clients he helps flee criminal threats and violent partners — its most improbable guardian angel

The United States abandoned a nuclear weapon beneath the ice in northern Greenland following a crash in 1968... We reunited two of the pilots, John Haug and Joe D'Amario, 40 years on to tell the story of how their plane ended up crashing on the ice a few miles out from the base....

Where other places greet the night by lighting up their streets and tourist attractions, this one goes the other way—low-energy sodium lamps are shielded from above, and household lights must face down, not up. The purpose: to bring out the stars.

This is the first film Alfred Hitchcock ever directed, sometime in late 1922 or early 1923. The story was about low-income residents of a building. It was written by a woman employed at Islington, her precise identity unknown. Even the film's title is unclear: Islington Studios' records listed it as being "Mrs. Peabody", but Hitchcock always referred to it as Number 13 (possibly because it was the thirteenth film he was involved in making, in some capacity).... he filming was ultimately shut down with only two reels of film completed. The picture was never actually completed or shown... The footage filmed is now long-lost, and nothing else is known about it, apart from Hitchcock's alleged assertion that it wasn't very interesting....

He was born Alfred Joseph Hitchcock. His father was a green grocer... He grew up in a very strict Roman Catholic family....

Carl Dean "Alfalfa" Switzer (August 7, 1927 — January 21, 1959) was an American child actor, professional dog breeder and hunting guide, most notable for appearing in the Our Gang short subjects series as Alfalfa, one of the series' most popular and best-remembered characters.

"We are pleased that Michelle Martin, renowned author, historian and professional re-enactor, will have her gallery of photographs on display in the Bunkhouse Gallery — this is an opportunity for the public to come see her talented work. This exhibit, entitled 'Capturing Magic — Woolaroc,' will appeal to our Woolaroc guests and is exactly the type of thing that we want to bring to Woolaroc...."

Darwin's theory of evolution has become the bedrock of modern biology. But for most of the theory's existence since 1859, even biologists have ignored or vigorously opposed it, in whole or in part.

IF you always thought you had a special chemistry with your loved one, you may finally have been proved right. Researchers have found that a passionate kiss unleashes a complex chemical surge into the brain which makes a lover feel excited, happy or relaxed. There is also speculation that this hormone release may be triggered directly by an exchange of sexually stimulating pheromones in the saliva.

The study showed that women need more than just a kiss to experience the same chemical high as men — with additional features such as a romantic atmosphere of dimmed lights and mood music also required.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Jennifer Figge pressed her toes into the Caribbean sand, exhilarated and exhausted as she touched land this week for the first time in almost a month. Reaching a beach in Trinidad, she became the first woman on record to swim across the Atlantic Ocean—a dream she'd had since the early 1960s, when a stormy trans-Atlantic flight got her thinking she could don a life vest and swim the rest of the way if needed.

At the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton Hotel this morning, President Obama caught pro-life advocates off guard when he said God wouldn't condone taking the life of an innocent human being. Obama spoke of the need for people of all rel

RealD Cinema is a digital stereoscopic projection technology made and sold by RealD Inc. It is currently the most widely used technology for watching 3-D films in theatres. Samsung will be using RealD technology in its upcoming HDTVs.

The Board of Medicine revoked the license of a Florida doctor on Friday accused of medical malpractice in a botched abortion in which a live baby was delivered, but ended up dead in a cardboard box.... According to the complaint, she gave birth at a Hialeah clinic after waiting hours for Renelique to arrive. The complaint said one of the clinic owners put the baby in a bag that was thrown away. Police found the infant's decomposing remains a week later. A medical examiner determined the cause of death was extreme prematurity...

The Coma Galaxy Cluster, in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices, the hair of Queen Berenice, is one of the closest very rich collections of galaxies in the nearby Universe. The cluster, also known as Abell 1656, is about 320 million light-years from Earth and contains more than 1000 members. ... NGC 4921 is one of the rare spirals in Coma, and a rather unusual one — it is an example of an "anaemic spiral" where the normal vigorous star formation that creates a spiral galaxy's familiar bright arms is much less intense. As a result there is just a delicate swirl of dust in a ring around the galaxy, accompanied by some bright young blue stars that are clearly separated out by Hubble's sharp vision....

Beautiful photo of double spiral galaxy

/>Drug Enforcement Administration agents this week raided four medical marijuana shops in California, contrary to President Obama's campaign promises to stop the raids. The White House said it expects those kinds of raids to end once Mr. Obama nominates someone to take charge of DEA, which is still run by Bush administration holdovers. [Yeah, sure.]

Dr. Sally Kristen Ride (born May 26, 1951) is an American physicist and a former NASA astronaut. Ride joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman—and then-youngest American—to enter space. In 1987 she left NASA to work at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Mayor Richard Daley said today Chicago has compiled a wish list of "shovel-ready projects" to spend federal economic stimulus funds on should Congress approve a plan. Unlike hundreds of other cities, however, Daley said Chicago won't make its list public.

1 in 200 of our human genes can be inactivated with no detectable effect on our health. A study by Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute scientists raises new questions about the effects of gene loss on our wellbeing and evolution. [Don't be so sure....]

'Malaria is spread by mosquitoes,' the Microsoft founder yelled at a well-heeled crowd at a technology conference in California. 'I brought some,' he added. 'Here, I'll let them roam around — there is no reason only poor people should be infected.'

SHEYLA Hershey's massive 38KKK breasts have been declared the world's biggest boob job. The 28-year-old American housewife and model has undergone nine ops to get her amazing figure. And even though medics have warned that her breasts are in danger of exploding, she does not seem to care.

It was followed by a wave of protests from equality groups and led to an investigation by the country's anti-discrimination authorities. The company is, however, sticking to its guns and a spokesman explained that the move was based on statistical research rather than superstition. 'A statistical study indicated that almost all of our best employees across Austria have one of the five star signs. 'We only decided to continue with that system and hire the best workers....'

Drivers better buckle up or pay the price: More cash-strapped states want to give law enforcement officers the authority to pull over motorists just for not wearing their seat belts. More than a dozen states that are considering making the switch to primary seat-belt enforcement laws need to do so before July to be eligible for millions in federal money.

The more nights out adolescents have with their friends, the more likely they are to report using marijuana, researchers here said. [Astonishing!]

What interested me on the Penny Postcard web site was this old photo of the Bartlesville Masonic Lodge before it was located in the old building that became the home of Cities Service Company and then of Rogers State University Bartlesville campus.

Microsoft Corp. is warning customers that tools for blocking automatic upgrades to the newest service packs of Windows Vista and Windows XP will expire in the coming months. In a note on a company blog aimed at enterprise IT professionals, Microsoft said the Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) blocking tool expires on April 28, while the one for XP SP3 expires May 19.

questioning the assumption that Windows 7 will recover market share lost by Vista and asking a broad range of, I think, important questions about home computer usage costs and motivations.

The Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, was officially declared extinct in 2000 when the last-known animal of its kind was found dead in northern Spain. Shortly before its death, scientists preserved skin samples of the goat, a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that live in mountain ranges across the country, in liquid nitrogen. Using DNA taken from these skin samples, the scientists were able to replace the genetic material in eggs from domestic goats, to clone a female Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo as they are known. It is the first time an extinct animal has been cloned.

The brown-eyed youngster is now 14-months-old and should weigh at least 20lb. Yet she is still the size of a newborn baby, tipping the scales at just over 7lb and a mere 19in. Suraya has been examined by a whole team of specialists including paediatricians, nutritionists, geneticists and hormone experts. But doctors say they still have no idea why she won't grow — describing her condition as a "real conundrum".

1 The placebo effect Don't try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.

Even with all of our science and research capabilities there are things we simply cannot explain. Here are 13 mind benders that have been puzzling the science world. 1 The placebo effect 2 The horizon problem 3 Ultra-energetic cosmic rays 4 Belfast homeopathy results 5 Dark matter 6 Viking's methane 7 Tetraneutrons 8 The Pioneer anomaly 9 Dark energy 10 The Kuiper cliff 11 The Wow signal 12 Not-so-constant constants 13 Cold fusion

It is all thanks to a striking coincidence.

"I use marijuana to open the endorphins of the mind so I can spiritually receive God," Hutchinson told the Portland Press Herald. He meets with fellow worshipers every Saturday for their "last supper." The Religion of Jesus Church, hokey as is sounds, is a bona fide religion and has been recognized as such by the State of Hawaii. The church was founded in 1969 by Rev. James Kimmel and incorporates elements of a number of religious traditions including Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Their main religious text is The Urantia Book, whic