An alternative Big Mac Index

http://www.economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14288808

An alternative Big Mac Index
Aug 20th 2009
From Economist.com

How many minutes to earn the price of a Big Mac?

THE size of your pay packet may be important, but so is its purchasing power. Helpfully, a UBS report published this week offers a handy guide to how long it takes a worker on the average net wage to earn the price of a Big Mac in 73 cities. Fast-food junkies are best off in Chicago, Toronto and Tokyo, where it takes a mere 12 minutes at work to afford a Big Mac. By contrast, employees must toil for over two hours to earn enough for a burger fix in Mexico City, Jakarta and Nairobi.

Obama Joker artist unmasked: A fellow Chicagoan

"After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ. "From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him... In terms of domestic policy, I don't think he's really doing much good for the country right now. We don't have to 'hero worship' the guy."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/08/obama-joker-artist.html

Obama Joker artist unmasked: A fellow Chicagoan
August 17, 2009

When cryptic posters portraying President Obama as the Joker from "Batman" began popping up around Los Angeles and other cities, the question many asked was, Who is behind the image?

Was it an ultra-conservative grassroots group or a disgruntled street artist going against the grain?

Nope, it turns out, just a 20-year-old college student from Chicago.

Bored during his winter school break, Firas Alkhateeb, a senior history major at the University of Illinois, crafted the picture of Obama with the recognizable clown makeup using Adobe's Photoshop software.

Alkhateeb had been tinkering with the program to improve the looks of photos he had taken on his clunky Kodak camera. The Joker project was his grandest undertaking yet. Using a tutorial he'd found online about how to "Jokerize" portraits, he downloaded the October 23 Time Magazine cover of Obama and began digitally painting over it.

Four or five hours later, he happily had his product.

On Jan. 18, Alkhateeb uploaded the image to photo-sharing site Flickr. Over the next two months, he amassed just a couple thousand hits, he said.

Then the counter exploded after a still-anonymous rogue famously found his image, digitally removed the references to Time Magazine, captioned the picture with the word "socialism" and hung printed copies around L.A., making headlines.

Alkhateeb's original Flickr page surpassed 20,000 views. The Times found his Flickr site last week thanks to a tip left by a loyal reader of The Ticket. By Friday, the page had been taken down.

On Alkhateeb's page, a manipulated image condemning fellow Chicagoan and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (captioned "epic fail") was mixed in with parodies of the "Guitar Hero" game franchises -- dubbed Quran Hero -- and of Napoleon riding a motorcycle.

Flickr had removed the Joker image due to copyright-infringement concerns, Alkhateeb says the company told him in an e-mail. A Flickr spokeswoman declined to comment due to a company policy that bars discussing inquiries about individual users.

Alkhateeb says he wasn't actively trying to cover his tracks, but he did want to lay low. He initially had concerns about connecting his name with anything critical of the president -- especially living in Chicago, where people are "very, very liberal," he said.

"After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ," Alkhateeb said. "From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him."

"I abstained from voting in November," he wrote in an e-mail. "Living in Illinois, my vote means close to nothing as there was no chance Obama would not win the state." If he had to choose a politician to support, Alkhateeb said, it would be Ohio Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

Possibly becoming a villain in his home city wasn't his only worry. Time's cover and the Joker obviously aren't Alkhateeb's copyrights to fool around with.

Concerned about a lawsuit, Alkhateeb, an unnamed superstar whose nationally recognized artwork had stunned friends and family, was relieved that the situation had floated for months without any major news organizations discovering that he was the man behind the paint.

After we contacted him, he hesitantly agreed to an interview.

If it's any consolation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that defends digital rights, says Alkhateeb has a strong fair-use defense if Time or DC Comics decides to take him to court -- that is if one even does file a lawsuit.

"You really want to think twice about going after a political commenter," said Corynne McSherry, a senior staff attorney at the EFF. In Time's case, "a news organization probably doesn't want to be in the situation of pursuing political criticism."

Perhaps the strongest case for anyone, McSherry said, is for Alkhateeb to claim money derived from people selling T-shirts with his picture. Is it worth pursuing? "It would be nice, but it's not that big of a deal," Alkhateeb said.

Although Alkhateeb claims he was making no political statement with the artwork, he's plugged into the Washington debate. Though born in the United States, his Palestinian family closely follows Middle Eastern politics.

"I think he's definitely doing better than Bush was," Alkhateeb said of Obama. Alkhateeb's views on foreign relations align with the Democrats, he said, while he prefers Republican ideals on domestic issues.

Alkhateeb's assessment of Obama: "In terms of domestic policy, I don't think he's really doing much good for the country right now," he said. "We don't have to 'hero worship' the guy."

Someday, Alkhateeb hopes to be a history teacher and high school football coach. He won't be pursuing a full-time career in art, but he'll continue playing with Photoshop on the side. He's honored by Shepard Fairey's assessment of his Joker picture, but disagrees with some of Fairey's comments criticizing the message of the Socialism poster.

"He made a picture of Bush as a vampire," Alkhateeb said about Fairey. "That's kind of speaking with two faces."

Regardless, Alkhateeb does agree with the Obama "Hope" artist about "socialism" being the wrong caption for the Joker image. "It really doesn't make any sense to me at all," he said. "To accuse him of being a socialist is really ... immature. First of all, who said being a socialist is evil?"
-- Mark Milian

It’s Hip to Be Round

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/fashion/13POTBELLY.html

It’s Hip to Be Round
GUY TREBAY
August 12, 2009

THIS summer the unvarying male uniform in the precincts of Brooklyn cool has been a pair of shorts cut at knickers length, a V-neck Hanes T-shirt, a pair of generic slip-on sneakers and a straw fedora. Add a leather cuff bracelet if the coolster is gay.

In truth this get-up was pretty much the unvarying male uniform last summer also, but this year an unexpected element has been added to the look, and that is a burgeoning potbelly one might term the Ralph Kramden.

Too pronounced to be blamed on the slouchy cut of a T-shirt, too modest in size to be termed a proper beer gut, developed too young to come under the heading of a paunch, the Ralph Kramden is everywhere to be seen lately, or at least it is in the vicinity of the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene, the McCarren Park Greenmarket and pretty much any place one is apt to encounter fans of Grizzly Bear.

What the trucker cap and wallet chain were to hipsters of a moment ago, the Kramden is to what my colleague Mike Albo refers to as the “coolios” of now. Leading with a belly is a male privilege of long standing, of course, a symbol of prosperity in most cultures and of freedom from anxieties about body image that have plagued women since Eve.

Until recently, men were under no particular obligation to exhibit bulging deltoids and shredded abdominals; that all changed, said David Zinczenko, the editor of Men’s Health, when women moved into the work force in numbers. “The only ripples Ralph Kramden” and successors like Mike Brady of “The Brady Bunch” had to demonstrate were in their billfolds, said Mr. Zinczenko, himself a dogged crusader in the battle of the muffin top. “But that traditional male role has changed.”

As women have come to outnumber men in the workplace, it becomes more important than ever for guys to armor themselves, Mr. Zinczenko said, with the “complete package of financial and physical,” to billboard their abilities as survivors of the cultural and economic wilds.

This makes sense, in a way, but how does one account for the new prevalence of Ralph Kramdens? Have men given in or given up? Are they finished with asserting the privileges that have always accrued to men. Or is the Ralph Kramden Barack Obama’s fault?

Hipsters, by nature contrarian, according to Dan Peres, the editor of Details, may be reacting in opposition to a president who is not only, as the press relentlessly reminds us, So Darn Smart, but also hits the gym every morning, has a conspicuously flat belly and, when not rescuing the economy or sparring with Kim Jong-il, shoots hoops.

“If we had a slob in the White House, all the hipsters would turn into some walking Chippendales calendar,” Mr. Peres said. Instead, the streets of Williamsburg are crowded with men who are, as he noted, “proudly rocking a gut.” Mr. Peres’s magazine has a term for these people: the new “poor-geoisie.” But the people lining up for $13 lobster rolls at the Brooklyn Flea last weekend hardly looked as if they were worried about making the rent.

“I sort of think the six-pack abs obsession got so prissy it stopped being masculine,” is how Aaron Hicklin, the editor of Out, explains the emergence of the Ralph Kramden. What once seemed young and hot, for gay and straight men alike, now seems passé. Like manscaping, spray-on tans and other metrosexual affectations, having a belly one can bounce quarters off suggests that you may have too much time on your hands.

“It’s not cool to be seen spending so much time fussing around about your body,” Mr. Hicklin said.

And so guys can happily and guiltlessly go to seed.

Women have almost never gotten a pass on the need to maintain their bodies, while men always have, said Robert Morea, a personal fitness trainer. (Full disclosure: my own.) It would be too much, he added, to suggest that “potbellies are suddenly O.K.,” but as lean muscle and functionality become the new gym mantras, hypertrophied He-Men with grapefruit biceps and blister-pack abs have come to resemble specimens from a diorama of “A Vanished World.”

“When do you ever see that guy, anyway?” Mr. Morea asked, referring to those legendary Men’s Health cover models, with their rippling torsos and famished smiles. “The only time you really see that guy, he’s standing in front of an Abercrombie & Fitch store.” Perhaps, he suggested, there is really only one of them. “It’s the same guy. They just move him around.”

A version of this article appeared in print on August 13, 2009, on page E10 of the New York edition.

NASA can't afford return to moon by 2020

http://www.mercurynews.com/nationworld/ci_13103724

Presidential panel concludes NASA can't afford return to moon by 2020
08/14/2009

WASHINGTON — NASA's Constellation program, conceived four years ago to return Americans to the moon by 2020, can't afford to do that — and the agency's budget won't allow humans to explore beyond the international space station for two decades, a presidential panel has concluded.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's annual budget of about $18 billion will pay to keep astronauts flying — albeit aboard Russian rockets — to the space station through 2020, the panel said Wednesday.

But that would leave no money for the moon, Mars or exploring other parts of the solar system for at least two decades.

"We haven't found a scenario that includes exploration that's viable," said former astronaut Sally Ride, one of 10 committee members who have until Aug. 31 to present President Barack Obama with future options for NASA.

Panel chairman Norm Augustine, the retired CEO of Lockheed Martin, said NASA is the victim of both budget cuts and technical problems with its Constellation program of new rockets and capsules that are supposed to return humans to the moon.

"The money available has declined considerably since the program began," he said. "On the other hand, the Constellation program has proven to be more difficult than it was thought to be."

Augustine added, "It will be difficult with the current budget to do anything that's terribly inspiring in the human spaceflight area. On the other hand, there are things you can do to prepare. ... It just won't come as soon."

The panel said it would take at least $3 billion more per year for NASA to have a "reasonable chance" of getting to the moon or elsewhere in the solar system before 2030.

And while committee members seemed to support more money, it's not clear where, in a time of trillion-dollar-plus federal deficits, the cash would come from.

The panel's pessimistic assessment of NASA's manned-space future contradicts years of assertions by the agency that despite budget cuts totaling about $30 billion over the next decade, its moon-landing program was on track and within budget.

Junk food dummies

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1206448/Junk-food-dummies-How-bingeing-burgers-chips-drain-brainpower.html

Junk food dummies: How bingeing on burgers and chips can drain your brainpower
By Chris Brooke
14th August 2009

Eating too much fast food will make you thicker in more ways than one, according to a study.

As well as expanding the waistline, a high-fat diet of curries, kebabs, burgers and chips can make you less intelligent.

The research was performed by scientists at Oxford University on rats.

A high-fat diet over less than ten days damaged the rodents’ short-term memory and made them less mentally alert, as well as significantly decreasing their ability to exercise.

The group of biological experts say their results – dubbed a ‘high-fat hangover’ – show an important link between what people eat, how they think, and how our bodies perform.

Andrew Murray, co-author of the study, said: ‘Western diets are typically high in fat and are associated with long-term complications such as obesity, diabetes, and heart failure yet the short-term consequences of such diets have been given relatively little attention.

‘We hope that the findings of our study will help people to think seriously about reducing the fat content of their daily food intake to the immediate benefit of their general health, well-being and alertness.’

The research team studied rats fed a lowfat diet, comprising just 7.5 per cent of calories as fat, and compared them with rats fed a high-fat junk food diet, typically 55 per cent of calories as fat.

They discovered that after just four days the muscles of the rats eating the high-fat diet were less able to use oxygen to make the energy needed to exercise, causing their hearts to work harder and increase in size.

After nine days on a high-fat diet, the rats took longer to complete a maze and made more mistakes in the process than their low-fat-diet counterparts.

The number of correct decisions before making a mistake dropped from over six to an average of five to 5.5.

The low-fat rats were also running 50 per cent further by this stage than their fatter and ‘thicker’ counterparts.
Researchers then investigated the cellular causes of these problems, particularly in muscle cells.

They found increased levels of a protein called uncoupling protein 3, which made the cells less efficient at using oxygen to make the energy required for running.

The findings are published by the Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology.

Dr Gerald Weissmann, editor of the journal, said: ‘It’s nothing short of a high-fat hangover.’
The research funded by the British Heart Foundation may have implications for athletes looking for the best diet for training and patients with metabolic disorders.

The scientists are now studying the effect of a short-term high-fat diet on humans.

God needs a Creationism exhibit in Tulsa!

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-17009-Freethought-Examiner~y2009m8d13-God-needs-a-Creationism-exhibit-in-Tulsa

God needs a Creationism exhibit in Tulsa!
August 13, 2009
Freethought Examiner
D.M. Murdock

For a change, here's something amusing on the religion front. The recent brouhaha at the Kentucky Creationism Museum, which last week was descended upon by atheist professor Dr. P.Z. Myers and some 300+ non-believers, along with the seizure for "tax fraud" of Dinosaur Adventure Land, the creationist theme park in South Carolina, have evidently inspired others to "honor" God with more wacky human works of the same ilk.

In this regard, a current candidate for the office of mayor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has decided that what God really needs is a Creationism exhibit at the Tulsa Zoo! Yes, that's right, the God of the universe "needs to be honored in the city," according to Republican Anna Falling:

As part of that effort, Falling has resurrected a failed push for an exhibit at the Tulsa Zoo that would tell the Genesis story of God creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh, originally proposed by Christian activist Dan Hicks in 2005, Tulsa World reported.

The all-powerful, self-contained God of the cosmos "needs" something! In fact, he needs to be honored in Tulsa, of all places! You see, God is fascinated by Tulsa—and he really likes the silly Creationist museums, theme parks and exhibits that humans put together. So, we can be sure that God will nod his gigantic head in approval when more of these kooky displays pop up in American cities. What fun—the circus is coming to town!

But, seriously, would not such a god, were he real, be honored best by the daring and sublime critical thought exhibited most often by doubters in organized religion, rather than the extreme gullibility and simple-mindedness adhered to by bibliolaters and assorted other religionists?

Eccentric Couple Live in Spaceship-Style House

http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/eccentric_couple_live_in_spaceship-style_house/

Eccentric Couple Live in Spaceship-Style House
08.15.2009
Tara McGinley

Hiran Ratnayake from Delawareonline.com wrote: “Towns have passed laws to deal with it and numerous gadgets have been developed to protect from it. But few have taken their hatred for noise as far as Houston’s Barney Vincelette.

A case of mild autism has made him extremely sensitive to noise. Vincelette, who lives in a spaceship-style house, thinks music, especially top 40, rap and rock ‘n’ roll, ‘sounds the same way feces smells.’

Vincelette used his genius-level IQ and parts of household microwave ovens to develop a makeshift device that uses electromagnetic waves to temporarily jam the circuitry of his neighbors’ stereos.

Barney Vincelette purchased his unusual house from a catalog and erected it on his Houston lot. While he revels in its ‘geometric simplicity,’ his wife, Carol, says it doesn’t have enough space.”

I Will Never Spend Another Dime in Whole Foods

http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/why_i_will_never_spend_another_dollar_in_whole_foods/

Why I Will Never Spend Another Dime in Whole Foods
08.14.2009
Richard Metzger
Tags:
Republicans
Whole Foods Boycott of 2009
John Mackey

Not a nickel or penny for that matter. Nothing. Ever again.

I was absolutely incensed by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s editorial against universal health care that appeared in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. In a classic example of a smug, rich guy doing the “I got mine, buddy, go get your own” routine, Ayn Rand-loving, Internet-trolling asshat Mackey actually has the nerve to suggest that instead of universal health care, people simply eat organic food bought at Whole Foods. You know, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. As yesterday’s TPM headline read “Who Needs Healthcare? We’ve Got Whole Foods!”

Is this a joke? A ridiculous misguided publicity stunt where we still haven’t heard the punch line? Fodder for a future South Park episode? Not to get all Al Goldstein on you Mackey, but FUCK YOU. And to the WSJ editorial editors, for shame that you let something this blatantly RIDICULOUS appear on the pages of a supposedly respectable newspaper. It’s an embarrassment, like giving Marie Antoinette (or Betty Crocker) editorial space to declare “Let them eat cake” and then argue the point!

What a creep! But that’s not to say that something good might not come of this mortifying episode. Like a boycott of the most over-priced supermarket chain in history!

A woman named Mieke Eerkins sent out the following letter on Facebook, which I am excerpting here with her permission:

Subject: Whole Foods- Shocking News

I wanted to share this with my more liberal friends who probably shop at Whole Foods, and hope you’ll pass it on if you agree with me. I am shocked and disappointed to learn that Whole Foods Market’s company position is in opposition to health care reform, and in general, supports Republican ideologies. Apparently, for years now (as he admits), the CEO has been posting right-wing rhetoric in newspapers under a pseudonym, but yesterday, he published an op-ed piece openly under his real name that is pretty extreme right-wing on health care reform. The CEO’s statement in the Wall Street Journal is in direct opposition to what I thought they believed in, and certainly in opposition to the beliefs of many of their customers (including me). I had no idea he supported a Republican ideology! How can a store that pretends to be in favor of healthy living turn around and say that only some privileged people deserve access to health?

The Whole Foods CEO’s exact words: “Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals…A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That’s because there isn’t any. This “right” has never existed in America.”

I think many people (like myself) assumed Whole Foods had a whole different ideology. Many people (like me until now) have no idea that they are supporting a right-wing ideology by shopping at Whole Foods. Well, I am done. I am not paying to feed a right-wing agenda.

I would urge you, if you disagree with Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey’s Republican ideology, to stop shopping there and let the store know why.

I at least wanted you to be aware, as I had no idea until today what I have been implicitly supporting by shopping there.
Well put Mieke!

PLEASE CUT AND PASTE THIS INTO AN EMAIL AND FORWARD TO YOUR FRIENDS

Oil Industry Memo Lays Out Plan For Astroturf

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/sensitive_oil_industry_memo_lays_out_plan_for_astr.php

"Sensitive" Oil Industry Memo Lays Out Plan For Astroturf Rallies Against Climate Change Bill
By Zachary Roth
August 14, 2009

A leaked memo sent by an oil industry group reveals a plan to create astroturf rallies at which industry employees posing as "citizens" will urge Congress to oppose climate change legislation.

The memo -- sent by the American Petroleum Institute and obtained by Greenpeace, which sent it to reporters -- urges oil companies to recruit their employees for events that will "put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy," and will urge senators to "avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill."

API tells TPMmuckraker that the campaign is being funded by a coalition of corporate and conservative groups that includes the anti-health-care-reform group 60 Plus, FreedomWorks, and Grover Norquist's Americans For Tax Reform.

The memo, signed by API president Jack Gerard, asks recipients to give API "the name of one central coordinator for your company's involvement in the rallies."

And it warns: "Please treat this information as sensitive ... we don't want critics to know our game plan."

Aside from the astroturf nature of the planned events, which appear aimed at passing off industry employees as independent citizens, the memo also raises questions about the positions of several major oil companies on the issue of climate change. BP and Shell both are members of API, and also of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of groups that supports Waxman-Markey, the very climate change legislation the memo criticizes.

API has spent over $3 million lobbying against that bill this year.

Bill Bush, a spokesman for API, told TPMmuckraker that there's no deception involved with the rallies. "I don't think anyone's hiding the ball about this," he said. "I don't think anyone's trying to suggest that this doesn't have anything to do with the oil and gas industry."

He described the campaign as preliminary. "A good bit is still in the planning stages," he said.

In a letter to Gerard, Greenpeace has called on API to reveal the member companies funding the astroturf effort.

A Greenpeace spokesman declared in a statement to reporters:

The question is, will BP and Shell continue to hand out millions to the API after this? If these companies want us to believe that they are serious about legislation to reduce climate emissions, it's time for them to pull funding from lobby groups who use underhand tactics to create a false impression of voter concern over Waxman-Markey.

Bush said he's not aware of any planned response to Greenpeace. And he said the campaign is being funded by members of the "Energy Citizens" alliance -- a coalition of corporate and conservative groups that 60 Plus, FreedomWorks, Americans For Tax Reform, the American Conservative Union, and the National Taxpayers Union.

A Washington lobbying group has already been caught sending forged letters, on behalf of a coal industry organization, purporting to come from local minority groups and urging lawmakers to oppose the climate change bill.
A congressional inquiry into the matter is ongoing.

Late Update: Shell Oil Company, which is a member both of the anti-Waxman-Markey API, and of the pro-Waxman-Markey USCAP, says it won't be involved in the rallies. A spokesman sent TPMmuckraker the following statement:

Shell's position is not aligned with the consensus opinion of the API on Waxman-Markey, therefore Shell will not participate in the rallies.

TOPICS: Global Warming, Lobbyists, Oil

Fortean Ufology

http://www.forteanswest.com/lowfiguesteditorial-SkylaireAlfvegren0809.html

L.O.W.F.I's Guest Editorial
The League of Western Fortean Intermediatists presents...
Fortean Ufology: Long Live the Old Guard, Long Live the New Flesh
by Skylaire Alfvegren
8-9-9

The real UFO story must encompass all of the many manifestations being observed. It is a story of ghosts and phantoms and strange mental aberrations; of an invisible world that surrounds us and occasionally engulfs us; of prophets and prophecies, and gods and demons. It is a world of illusion and hallucination where the unreal seems very real, and where reality itself is disorted by strange forces which can seemingly manipulate space, time, and physical matter--forces that are almost entirely beyond our powers of comprehension.

Nearly all of those who have finally come to an understanding of the true nature of the phenomenon have quietly abandoned the subject because they found it impossible to articulate their findings and make the incredible credible... they were rendered mute by the awesome and overwhelming realization that man is not alone; that the human race is merely a trifling part of something much bigger.

Many flying saucers seem to be nothing more than a disguise for some hidden phenomenon. They are like Trojan horses descending into our forests and farm fields, promising salvation and offering us the splendor of some great supercivilization in the sky. But while the statuesque long-haired "Venusians" have been chatting benignly with isolated traveling salesmen and farm wives, a multitude of shimmering lights and metallic disks have been silently busying themselves in the forests of Canada, the Outback country of Australia, and the swamps of Michigan. Before we can find any answers, we must first find the right questions to ask. We must understand the exact nature of these visitors, and of ourselves.

--John Keel, Operation Trojan Horse

Many, many moons ago, in a dark and smoky bar deep in the wilds of Maryland, I toasted British phenomenalist/megalith expert John Michell with a fine, single malt scotch. Among the many things he impressed upon me was the idea that “at any given time, there are never more than 1,000 true Forteans on the planet.” Charles Fort, the iconoclastic author who was the first to seriously examine the airship mystery of 1896-97, as well as the first to poke fun at astronomers and their poo-pooing of strange things in the sky (Lo!, 1931), is a figure not everyone with an interest in the subject of UFOs may be familiar with, but should be.

I have long marveled at how interest in strange phenomena is so very cyclical — the spiritualist explosion of the ‘20s and ‘30s, the occultish Age of Aquarius of the ‘60s, which morphed into the crystal-strewn New Age movement of the ‘80s which morphed into the Art Bell, X-Filed ‘90s. My friend Tony Perkins has a fascinating theory about the evolution of portrayals of extraterrestrials in popular culture being shaped by astrology.

There has been an upsurge in interest amongst the general public (what that is, I’m not really sure) in UFOs, the paranormal, cryptozoology, and the like, in the past few years. Evidenced by UFO Hunters, Monsterquest and a handful of (frankly) really dumb-ass, infra-red saturated ghost-hunting excursions, I take it all as a good omen (even as the world of print continues to cough and sputter, cut pages and go bankrupt.)

My first mentor, John Keel, spent over a year of his life interviewing thousands of UFO witnesses all over the country in the late ‘60s. Sifting through mountains of data, transcripts, and sighting reports, he eventually reached a fairly startling conclusion. Coining the term “ultraterrestrial,” it was his contention that many of the strange lights seen in the sky were actually of an extradimensional — rather than extraterrestrial — origin. His groundbreaking ideas coagulated into his 1970 classic, Operation Trojan Horse (republished in paperback by now-defunct Illuminet Press in 1996, and available at a reasonable price via http://www.bookfinder.com/.)

I admired Keel for a rainbow of reasons; part of the cantankerous coot’s appeal laid in the fact that he had gotten to be a truly phenomenal adventurer, and luckily for us, managed to put a lot of it down on paper. He traveled to India in search of the elusive rope trick, got more than he bargained for, and published the whole thing in Jadoo (1957, Julian Messner, Inc.). He was first on the scene (along with fellow researcher, Gray Barker) in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, when locals were being terrorized by a fuzzy, bat-winged, red-eyed behemoth which came to be known as Mothman. (Keel’s 1975 book, The Mothman Prophecies, was fictionalized in a film of the same name starring Richard Gere in 2000; the book itself is available for almost nothing in mass market, movie tie-in paperback.) In the decades preceding the publication of his books, Keel globe-trotted, typewriter in tow, filing crazy stories for men’s magazines from Cairo to Loch Ness. Oh, how I romanticized his life when I was a kid, knowing full well that the world he had lived in was one I would probably never see. This obsession grew worse when Keel and I began corresponding when I was 17, and writing my first magazine column about “the weird stuff.” After mailing him a stack of my work, he wrote back, with warm sarcasm: “Your copy looks great, and your Xeroxing is perfect.”

John Keel passed away in New York City, on July 3rd of this year, due to a bad heart and complications of diabetes. John Michell (after having given up drinking some years ago — and trust me, no one did it with more finesse) passed away earlier this year in London. In Ufological/Fortean circles, these men were giants. (Patrick Huyghe, proprietor of Anomalist Books and Anomalist.com, remarked of Keel after his death that “he was our Michael Jackson.”)

Keel’s ultraterrestrials and tales of terror at the hands of the dread “Men in Black” linger to this day; but as we all know, Ufology is a funny thing. It is a “field,” it is a “science” of sorts, but it’s also a hobby for thousands of people — albeit a hobby laced with serious, sobering implications. A television production company recently asked me to produce my “credentials” as an Ufologist. My answer? Asking an Ufologist to produce his credentials would be like asking Captain Crunch to produce his military service record.

Meaning that, anyone can be an expert. Anyone can write a book. Anyone can espouse their individual theories without having to produce a shred of hard evidence, and for that reason, Ufology is admirably democratic, but also the reason why it has such a damn hard time being taken seriously. (As far as I know, only the venerable Jim Marrs has ever managed to teach an accredited college course on the subject of UFOs.)

After all these years bounding down the proverbial rabbit hole, I still have plenty of questions. Are we alone in the universe? What is the nature of reality? Has some shadowy government agency really had a hand in the deaths of dozens of UFO (and conspiracy) researchers over the years, and to what degree do terrestrial agencies have to do with strange craft in the sky?

My questions, however, are coupled with a lifetime of weird sightings and strange experiences. Last time I saw Jordan Maxwell, he admonished us to “always trust the one who’s looking for the truth -- never trust the one that claims he has found it.”

Ufology has many factions, which remind me at times of the street gangs in Walter Hill’s goofy 1979 movie, The Warriors. You’ve got the “hardware hounds” who believe that UFOs are solely the product of advanced military technology; you’ve got the “true believers,” who know we’re being visited by little green men and a plethora of other EBEs (which fracture into “good” and “bad” aliens); and then you’ve got the “experiencers” and abductees, the group, ostensibly, with the most up close and personal interest in the truth. Over the years, I’ve been told some wild stories, often in the strictest confidence, because “no one back home believes me.”

The work of the “old guard” is fundamental. John Keel and John Michell (and others) continue to inspire new generations of the cracked and inquisitive. Our culture, obsessed by youth and damaged by advertising, in large part, doesn’t respect its elders. (Although I give you, dear reader, more credit than the average Joe.) In the subculture of Ufology, I find far less solidarity than I would like, and as figures like Keel and Michell thin in numbers, it is up to the “new blood” to take the reins, without bickering too much in the process. Differences of opinion lead to a healthy discourse; to that end, I have attended conferences where one speaker’s lecture will entirely contradict the one following it, as attendees take it all in stride. I’ve also seen researchers get into fist fights.

Science fiction author, music legend and all-around bad-ass, Mick Farren, told me a story about organizing a famous music festival in 1971. The outdoor concert took place over Glastonbury, a mystical part of England which figures prominently in the work of John Michell. It is where a goodly number of England’s ley lines converge. Ley lines, areas of extreme geomagnetic energy, criss-cross the earth, and have long been associated with paranormal activity and mystical experiences. (In Mexico, for instance, it was discovered that the natives had built their sacred temples atop these areas of highly concentrated geomagnetic energy — which the Conquistadors later demolished, only to erect churches on the same sites, hoping to capture the sacred energy.) At the Glastonbury festival, the job of set-up was handed to some acid-dropping biker hippies. Overseeing the construction of the pyramid-shaped stage, said biker hippies stopped short before pounding the metal scaffolding into the earth. “Crikey,” one exclaimed. “What if we bloody well split the world in half?”

The point I’m trying to make with this story is that it pays to be phenomenally inclusive, rather than exclusive, to remain open-minded yet skeptical in a “classical” sense, as many of our intellectual forbears did.

Rashied Ali, Free-Jazz Drummer, Dies at 76

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/arts/music/14ali.html

Rashied Ali, Free-Jazz Drummer, Dies at 76
By WILLIAM GRIMES
August 14, 2009

Rashied Ali, whose expressionistic, free-jazz drumming helped define the experimental style of John Coltrane’s final years, died Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 76.

The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Patricia Ali.

Mr. Ali, who first encountered Coltrane in their Philadelphia neighborhood in the late 1950s, made the leap from admiration to collaboration in the mid-1960s, when he joined Elvin Jones as a second drummer with Coltrane’s ensemble at the Village Gate in November 1965.

Mr. Ali recorded with Coltrane and Jones on the 1965 album “Meditations” and, after replacing Jones as Coltrane’s drummer, on the duet album “Interstellar Space” (1967), one of the purest expressions of the free-jazz movement.

“I didn’t know what it was, but he called it multidirectional rhythms,” Mr. Ali said of his drumming in an interview for the documentary “The World According to John Coltrane” (1990). On Mr. Ali’s Web site, rashiedali.org, Rashid Ali's Web site his playing is described as “a multirhythmic, polytonal propellant, helping fuel Coltrane’s flights of free-jazz fancy.”

Mr. Ali was born Robert Patterson into a musical family in Philadelphia. He started out on piano and dabbled with trombone and trumpet before finding his way to the drums, which he began to play seriously while serving with Army bands during the Korean War. Perhaps thanks to his military experience, he always executed drumrolls with crisp precision.

On returning to Philadelphia, Mr. Ali played in local rhythm-and-blues and rock ’n’ roll groups before moving on to jazz. He studied with Philly Joe Jones and paid close attention to heroes like Max Roach and Art Blakey, but a turning point came when he listened to Coltrane’s recordings with Jones. “Instead of being a timekeeper drummer, I wanted to play more,” he recalled for the Coltrane documentary.

Mr. Ali moved to New York in 1963 and began playing with progressive jazz musicians like Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler. His first important recording was with Shepp on the album “On This Night.”

After pestering Coltrane to be allowed to sit in with his group at the Half Note jazz club and eventually getting a chance one evening, Mr. Ali passed up the golden opportunity to perform as a second drummer with Jones on the album “Ascension,” the seminal record of the free-jazz movement. He later realized his mistake and accepted second-drummer status at the Village Gate and on “Meditations.”

After Coltrane’s death in 1967, Mr. Ali performed with Alice Coltrane and then toured Europe. Returning to New York, he opened a club, Ali’s Alley, in a building he bought in SoHo, then in its early bohemian phase. The club, a showcase for free-jazz musicians, was at the center of the loft jazz scene of the 1970s. It operated until 1979, and Mr. Ali lived in the building for the rest of his life.

From the 1980s until his death, Mr. Ali performed and recorded with several avant-garde groups, including Phalanx, By Any Means and Prima Materia, an ensemble devoted to interpreting the music of Coltrane and Ayler. Most recently he appeared with the Rashied Ali Quintet, which he formed in 2003, and performed as a duo with the saxophonist Sonny Fortune.

Besides his wife, he is survived by two brothers, the jazz drummer Muhammad Ali and Theodore Patterson, both of Philadelphia, and nine children.

“He could play straight, put down the time and swing,” the critic Stanley Crouch said. “He had a good command of his instrument. He once told me that he thought of himself as playing in 4/4, but the other realms of 4/4 that we don’t usually hear.”

Bolt scorches 100 field in world-record 9.58

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/2009-08-16-track-worlds-day-2_N.htm

Bolt scorches 100 field in world-record 9.58 seconds
8-16-9

BERLIN (AP) — Olympic champion Usain Bolt set a 100-meter world record in the track and field world championships Sunday night, outrunning Tyson Gay and the rest of the field in a blistering 9.58 seconds in the final.

Bolt shaved 0.11 seconds off the record he set at the Beijing Olympics, beating defending champion Gay, who set a U.S. record of 9.71 seconds.

"I made sure if I ran a good perfect race, there was no worries," Bolt said.

Gay took the silver medal just ahead of Jamaica's Asafa Powell, who won bronze in the fastest 100 ever with a time of 9.84

"I did my best," said Gay, a three-time world champ. "I did good. It just wasn't good enough."

The race had been the most anticipated event of the world championships and lived up to its billing. Bolt won the Olympic gold in Beijing last year with a world record performance of 9.69.

Candy: A Cult Film So Bad That It’s Just Bad

http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/candy_a_cult_film_so_bad_that_its_just_bad/

Candy: A Cult Film So Bad That It’s Just Bad
08.03.2009
Richard Metzger

Candy should, I repeat should be off the scale incredible. But it’s not.

Candy was a film that was always talked about, but no one ever saw it. The poster of Candy topless in the airplane cockpit would always be for sale in the back pages of magazines like “Famous Monsters of Filmland” next to ones of King Kong and Frankenstein and it became a familiar image of the era. But the movie you never saw. Not on any late night movie show, never on a Sunday morning “Million Dollar Movie” or anything like that, Candy was seemingly banned from TV for being too racy and for whatever reason was never released on VHS either. Nor was it ever on HBO or Showtime. It was the great lost movie in my eyes.

I became mildly obsessed with this film I could never see and went about collecting movie posters, lobby cards, publicity photos and I own several different versions of the novel by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg with different groovy covers. The mythical Candy became a cult movie Holy Grail for me. I really built it up in my mind. For years I tried to get hold of a copy in the tape trading underground, but the best I was ever able to find was still unwatchable. Then finally it came out on DVD. It was like Christmas had arrived.

But it sucked! Really sucked. It was such a let down!

I mean just LOOK at the cast: Ringo Starr (Emmanuel, the Mexican gardener), Charles Aznavour (the horny hunchback), Marlon Brando (Grindl, the horny (fake) Indian guru), Richard Burton (MacPhisto, the drunk, horny Welsh poet), James Coburn (egotistical surgeon), John Huston (dirty old man doctor) and Walter Matthau (horny military general). Sugar Ray Robinson and Anita Pallenberg make cameo appearances. How could you go wrong with a cast like that?

Let’s not forget the amazing opening space travel sequence by Douglas Trumbull who went on to make 2001 with Stanley Kubrick. And the soundtrack by The Byrds, Steppenwolf and soundtrack great Dave Grusin (it’s INCREDIBLE and easy to find on audio blogs). The script was even adapted by Southern and Hoffman with Buck Henry. HOW could this fail?

It even featured the decade defining pulchritude of Miss Teen Sweden, Ewa Aulin, in the title role of Candy Christian.

But despite all this Candy is a terrible film and even worse, it’s boring.

One of the things that must have mucked up things badly for the production is—and I am just theorizing here—the contracts for the lead actors. These were THE leading actors of the day, all of them top drawer A-list 60s talent. After watching Candy the thought occurred to me that Marlon Brando’s agent probably asked how much screen time Richard Burton was getting and demanded the same for his client. Then James Coburn’s manager asked the same question and demanded equal time for his client and so on and so until each actor was guaranteed “Most Favored Nations” equal screen time. How else to explain the film’s structure? It’s maddening to watch and Candy feels like it’s never going to end.

STILL, I’m not saying it’s so bad you shouldn’t watch it. Actually I think that if this sounds even remotely intriguing to you then it’s definitely worth seeing. It’s not good, no, we’ve already established that fact, but it is a super insane, trippy, campy relic of the 1960s with some of the most iconic actors of the decade behaving like total hambones, each trying to outdo the other in chewing up the scenery.

I am a (Mexican) Coke Fiend

http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/i_am_a_mexican_coke_fiend/

I am a (Mexican) Coke Fiend
08.13.2009
Richard Metzger

Okay, I’ll admit it… I’ve got a new vice and it’s a little on the embarrassing side. You see, I’ve turned into a real Coke fiend. Not cocaine, oh no, I went through that phase years ago, I mean THE REAL THING... Mexican Coca-Cola! That’s right kids, Mexican Coke is different from (most) domestic variants of the world’s most popular soft drink. In Mexican they use real sugar cane—none of this high fructose corn syrup shit south of the border—and it is SO FREAKING DELICIOUS.

Mind you, I say this as someone who has NEVER liked soda and never drank it at all (I could go years without drinking a single carbonated beverage, it’s true), but man I just cannot get enough this this stuff. It happened one day when a friend was visiting. We walked around the corner to the local bodega and my friend noticed that they had the classic glass Coke bottles with the stickers on them—“YES!”—he cried out “They’ve got Mexican Coke here!” We bought two, drank them, then went straight back and bought two more. That was a year ago and now I drink them all the time (so does my wife, another lifelong soda hater, now similarly addicted to the “Mexican brown”—as we Mexican Coke fiends call our favorite tipple).

I’ve got it easy, after all I live in Los Angeles where Mexican Coke is plentiful and cheap. Here’s some info from the A Continuous Lean blog about where you can “score” some Mexican Coke in your locale:

How do you get your hands on some of this tasty Mexican Coke? If you live in New York there are a few options. Bodegas in places like Sunset Park, Washington Heights, etc. often stock Mexican Coca-Cola as well as other versions of Coke from South American countries. The beverage store New-Beer on the Lower East Side will occasionally sell the real-deal sugar cane Coke. If you live in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico or California Costco sells Mexican Coke by the case. I have my friend Kate from Texas bring me four bottles at a time. Hope she doesn’t read this and see that I could get my Coke on the LES. Wait, that doesn’t sound right….

District 9

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/22717751/review/29554758/district_9

District 9
Starring: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, David James, Mandla Gaduka, William Allen Young
Directed by: Neill Blomkamp
2009 Sony Pictures/Screen Gems Sci-Fi

Fanboys were orgasmic when producer Peter Jackson previewed District 9 at July's Comic-Con in San Diego. Variety tagged it the "thinking person's alien movie." I'm assuming Transformers 2 is the stupid person's version. And since Michael Bay's attack on the human thought process has already grossed $380 million in the U.S. alone, District 9 has its work cut out. Smart sci-fi movies, such as Duncan Jones' Moon, are typically shuttled to the indie ghetto.

Not this time. Jackson and South African writer-director Neill Blomkamp have made District 9 a thriller-diller that trades in ideas without forgetting to go whup-ass on your nervous system. The R-rated District 9 is all kinds of awesome — and not just to geeks. Blomkamp, 29, is a talent to watch. Raised in Johannesburg before moving to Canada, he dreamed of combining his interest in sci-fi with the tormented world of racism and xenophobia he grew up in. District 9 is an expansion of the six-minute short Alive in Joburg that he made in 2005, which Jackson had already admired. Using a documentary style, with harsh lighting and hand-held cameras, he sets the scene for the vividly real horrors that follow.

A spaceship hovers over Johannesburg. It stalled there 28 years ago, when apartheid policies segregated nonwhites into Soweto-like townships. Alien refugees have been closed off from humans in the slums of District 9. Despite their mental acuity, they are demeaned as "prawns" for their crustacean-shell armor and the mouth tentacles that wiggle madly when they speak in gurgles, in our language and in their own.

Blomkamp and co-writer Terri Tatchell are not above having a laugh at, say, the aliens' jones for cat food, cans and all, and the popularity of interspecies prostitution. But there is serious business in watching the world grow bored as the aliens fail to put on fireworks for the media by attacking or showing off. Instead, they follow the human model and form gangs, hassle cops, deal with Nigerian drug dealers and — yes — plan an escape by covertly building weapons.

It's the artillery that brings in Multi-National United (MNU), the private-interest group out to make a killing from learning how alien DNA can unleash firepower. Gruesome experiments are performed in secret labs, and a plan is initiated to ship the aliens off to District 10, which is a concentration camp.

Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copely) is the MNU agent in charge of the move to District 10. Wikus starts out as a dupe of his MNU father-in-law. But once infected by an alien virus that turns him into a prawn, he learns hard lessons at the hands of MNU killer Koobus (a hissable David James). Their climactic faceoff is tremendously exciting. But the soul of the movie resides in Wikus' relationship with two alien characters, Christopher Johnson (the superb Jason Cope) and his son, the computer-generated Little C.J. It's here that the film — with reference points from Alien to Cloverfield — grows into an intimate epic. You'll be wowed by Copley. His heart-rending tour de force deserves comparison to Jeff Goldblum's in The Fly. And to me, that's high praise. District 9, with a chump-change budget of $30 million, soars on the imagination of its creators. This baby has the stuff to end the movie summer on a note of dazzle and distinction.

PETER TRAVERS
Aug 13, 2009

Golf, rugby backed by IOC board for 2016 Games

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jnx2wRLvYAjUAXw0oCm9_rsGT49QD9A24L801

Golf, rugby backed by IOC board for 2016 Games
By STEPHEN WILSON (AP)
8-13-9

BERLIN — Golf and rugby took a big step toward joining 2016 Summer Olympics, making the cut after the IOC rejected bids from baseball, softball and three other sports.

The International Olympic Committee executive board Thursday also denied squash, karate and roller sports.

The board will submit golf and rugby sevens — a faster-paced version of the standard 15-a-side game — for ratification by the full 106-member IOC assembly in Copenhagen in October.

"In the end, the decision came down to which two would add the most value," IOC president Jacques Rogge said. "Golf and rugby will be a great addition to the games. ... They have global appeal, a geographically diverse lineup of top iconic athletes and an ethic that stresses fair play."

Final approval will require a simple majority vote by the full IOC. Rogge said the sports will be put to individual votes, not as a tandem.

The board also approved the inclusion of women's boxing in the 2012 London Olympics. Boxing had been the only summer Olympic sport without female competitors.

The golf decision opens the possibility of Tiger Woods playing for an Olympic gold medal in 2016. Rogge said he is "absolutely" sure that Woods and other top players will compete if the sport gets final approval.

"Who is one of the major icons of the world? Tiger Woods," Rogge told The Associated Press. "This is a very important sport."

The 15-member board selected the proposed sports for 2016 by secret ballot over several rounds, with the sport receiving the fewest votes eliminated each time. Rogge, who chairs the board, did not vote.

Rugby was the clear winner overall, getting seven votes in the first round and a majority of nine in the second. In a separate ensuing vote, golf needed four rounds to get through. Karate led the first round with five votes, with golf getting three. Golf then got six votes in the second, seven in the third and nine in the fourth.

Golf was played at the 1900 Paris Olympics and 1904 St. Louis Games. The sport's backers say bringing golf back into the Olympics would help it develop worldwide, noting many governments fund only Olympic sports.

"It's a historic moment for golf," said Peter Dawson, chief executive of the Royal and Ancient club and co-leader of golf's Olympic bid. "We're absolutely delighted to have the prospect of being back in. We're not counting any chickens because we have the Copenhagen vote to go through, but obviously the recommendation is a major step."

Golf proposes a 72-hole stroke-play competition for men and women, with 60 players in each field. The world's top 15 players would qualify automatically, and all major professional tours would alter tournament schedules to avoid a clash with the Olympics and let the big names play.

Rugby was played in four Olympics between 1900 and 1924 in the full 15-a-side format, but now proposes the 7-a-side version. The tournament would be played over four days with 12 teams each for men and women.

"They bring the spectacular side of sport, with a lot of scoring, reversals and turnovers," said Rogge, who played rugby on a national level for Belgium. "You have a lot of countries that can win medals. It's very universal."

International Rugby Board president Bernard Lapasset was ebullient but cautious.

"We recognize the significance of this milestone in our campaign but are also mindful that the ultimate decision rests with the IOC members when they meet in Copenhagen. The Olympic Games would be the pinnacle of the sport for all our athletes," he said.

Softball and baseball had been seeking a return after being voted off the program four years ago for the 2012 London Games. Attempted reinstatements were rejected by the IOC in 2006. In Thursday's ballot, neither received more than two votes in any round.

"Obviously, I guess we didn't do a good enough job," International Softball Federation president Don Porter said. "We have to think that over and see what's going to be important to try to get all our young athletes all over the world that Olympic dream. I guess that hurts all of us more than anything else, the sense that we let them down."

"We can't throw in the towel, even though it's the seventh inning," Porter said. "Hopefully we'll come to bat in the bottom of the seventh."

International Baseball Federation president Harvey Schiller said he saw no point of mounting another Olympic bid for his sport.

"That's not for me to decide ... but what are you going to say differently?" he said. "This wasn't about using the Olympics to grow the game of baseball. This was about having the opportunity for people to play on this big stage."

Rogge said softball and baseball should not give up hope.

"There is life outside the Olympic Games; many sports have proven that," he said. "Secondly, never say never."

Rogge was asked how the IOC could reject softball at a time when it is pushing for gender equality. He said golf and rugby will bring in a total of 204 women athletes, compared with 120 from softball.

"This is an upside of 84," he said.

For London 2012, three women's weight classes — a total of 36 athletes in flyweight, lightweight and middleweight — will be added to the boxing competition. To make room for the women, one of the existing 11 men's weight divisions — light flyweight — will be dropped.

Overall, the number of boxers will remain unchanged at 286.

"I can only rejoice about the inclusion of women's boxing," Rogge said. "Women's boxing has progressed a tremendous amount in the last five years and it was time that it be included in the games."

In other changes for 2012, the IOC approved new 200-meter sprint events in canoe-kayak, a combined run-shoot format for modern pentathlon and the elimination of nonmedal consolation matches in handball. The IOC told wrestling, swimming and cycling they will have to drop events and keep the same number of athletes if they want to add new events. A decision on mixed doubles in tennis was put off pending more information from the International Tennis Federation.

Website of the Week: The Chickipedia

http://www.mademan.com/chickipedia/

Les Paul, Guitar Legend, Dies at 94

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/08/13/les-paul-guitar-legend-dead-at-94

Les Paul, Guitar Legend, Dies at 94
8/13/09

Les Paul, one of the most revered guitarists in history and the father of the electric guitar, passed away last night, August 12th at the age of 94. Paul’s manager confirmed to Rolling Stone that cause of death was respiratory failure, and a statement from Gibson indicates Paul was suffering from severe pneumonia and died at a hospital in White Plains, New York. An inductee of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Grammy Hall of Fame, Paul is credited as the inventor of the electric body guitar and the pioneer of recording techniques like electronic echo and multi-tracking. Paul also had a celebrated career as both a solo artist and with singer Mary Ford, his wife until 1964. In 2003, Rolling Stone named Les Paul to our list of the Greatest Guitarists of All Time, and his influence on guitar greats who followed him is undeniable. “He was one of the most stellar human beings I’ve ever known,” Slash posted on his Twitter today, referring to Paul as his “friend and mentor.”

In the early ’50s, Paul and Ford had a string of hits including Mockin’ Bird Hill,” “How High the Moon,” “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise” and “Vaya Con Dios.” Paul also began experimenting with the electric guitar, building the Les Paul Recording Guitar, an instrument that allowed for “hot” pickups and “fatter” tone than the Fender on the market. Paul linked up with Gibson Guitars and his six-string became one of the guitar maker’s signatures.

Around this time, Paul also made the first-ever eight-track recording, as well as the dual-pickup guitar, the 14-fret guitar, and various types of electronic transducers used both in guitars and recording studios. For his achievements as a technician, Paul was also inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005, joining Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla.

Paul was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 1915, a fact celebrated in the name of the 1980 Les Paul documentary The Wizard of Waukesha. Last November, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honored Paul with its annual American Music Masters Concert, where Slash, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Richie Sambora and the Patti Smith Group’s Lenny Kaye all paid tribute to Paul (watch footage from the event, below). Kaye told the audience, “Before Les, guitars were only amplified. Les made them truly electric.” During his acceptance speech, Paul joked, “Everybody thought I was a guitar until I played here tonight.” One thing is for certain: Les Paul is responsible for changing the way rock & roll sounds and he will be greatly missed.

Lady Gaga Is Nude, Wants To Turn The World Gay

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/14/lady-gaga-is-nude-wants-t_n_259435.html

Lady Gaga Is Nude, Wants To Turn The World Gay
Katy Hall
08-14-09

Lady Gaga poses topless and smeared in lipstick on the cover of OUT! magazine. Inside, she talks about her love of all things gay. Here are some highlights from the interview:

On her early gay mentors:

"I had a few gay piano teachers. I was in acting class and ballet from a very young age, and I remember being around a lot of gay boys in dance class. I feel intrinsically inclined toward a more gay lifestyle."

On her own sexuality:

"I myself am not a gay woman -- I am a free-spirited woman: I have had boyfriends, and I have hooked up with women, but it's never been like 'I discovered gayness when I was dot dot dot.' "

On her love of gay culture:

"I very much want to inject gay culture into the mainstream. It's not an underground tool for me. It's my whole life. So I always sort of joke the real motivation is to just turn the world gay."

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Lockerbie bombing: victim's father to sue

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/scotland/6034698/Lockerbie-bombing-victims-father-to-sue.html

Lockerbie bombing: victim's father to sue
The leading campaigner for justice over the Lockerbie tragedy, Dr Jim Swire, is planning a ground-beaking legal action more than 20 years after the terrorist attack that claimed 270 lives.
Andrew Alderson, Chief Reporter
15 Aug 2009

Dr Swire, whose daughter Flora, 24, died in the attack, is preparing to sue the Scottish prosecution service because he is convinced it deliberately blocked attempts to bring his daughter's "real" killers to court.

He is planning the action under human rights legislation just three days after it was disclosed that the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is likely to be released later this month.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, 57, who has terminal prostate cancer and is expected to be freed on compassionate grounds, has always protested his innocence.

Dr Swire, 73, a spokesman for the relatives of the victims, is convinced that Megrahi was wrongly convicted.

His supporters claim that international politics prevented the truth from being uncovered during the investigation into the mid-air explosion which caused the deaths of 259 people on board Pan Am Flight 103 and a further 11 on the ground.

Dr Swire has told of his determination to bring his daughter's killers to justice in a letter sent to Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary, in which he is critical of the Crown Office, which is responsible for criminal prosecutions in Scotland.

In the letter, he highlights the fact that evidence from a Heathrow security guard was suppressed for more than 12 years and did not figure at Megrahi's trial in 2000 and 2001.

The guard revealed that Pan Am's baggage area at Heathrow was broken into 17 hours before Flight 103 took off from the airport for New York.

Dr Swire believes that this was probably when the bomb was planted, not much earlier on a flight from Malta.

In his letter, sent on Aug 10, Dr Swire says that he is now "reluctantly" looking at two projects:

- "To take action against the Crown Office under Human Rights legislation, since I now believe that the Crown Office has deliberately obstructed my rights to know who killed my daughter and why she was not protected, and continues to do so," and

- "To seek annulment of the findings of the Lockerbie Fatal Accident Inquiry [of 1990] on grounds of withholding of evidence about Heathrow, and then to seek a new FAI or legitimate equivalent in its place."

Critics of Megrahi's conviction have long believed that the Libyan was the victim of a US-led conspiracy to "frame" the country and its ruler, Col Muammar Gaddafi, for the bombing on Dec 21, 1988, when the plane exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie less than 40 minutes after take-off.

Many, including Dr Swire, now believe that the most likely to group to have carried out the bombing was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC).

At the time, the group was headed by Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian Army captain, who was based in Damascus and funded by Iran.

Dr Swire suspects Iran was seeking revenge for the shooting-down of Iran Air Flight 655, with the loss of 290 lives, by the USS Vincennes in July 1988 – just five months before Lockerbie. Iran did not accept the US's claim that the incident was a mistake.

Dr Swire believes the families of the victims have been "pawns in a political scenario that had nothing to do with truth".

He added: "The Heathrow break-in would have been the perfect scenario for the Syrian-backed PFLP-GC to put one of its bombs on the aircraft."

The grieving father also suspects that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, now the anti-Western president of Iran but then reportedly an ambitious figure in Iran's Republican Guard, may have been involved in Lockerbie.

Another suspect is Abu Talb, a Palestinian later arrested and jailed in Sweden for terrorist bombings: he had circled the date of December 21 1988 in a calendar found at his flat.

Other relatives, particularly those in the US seeking "closure" over the tragedy, still think the right man was convicted and want Megrahi to die in jail.

The Libyan was convicted by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands. Another suspect was acquitted.

Critics say the evidence against Megrahi was, at best, circumstantial, and, at worst, flimsy. His lawyers have dismissed the evidence of Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper and the key prosecution witness.

He said he had sold clothes to Megrahi which had supposedly been in the suitcase that contained the bomb.

But it later emerged that Mr Gauci had seen a photograph of the suspect in a magazine linking him to the bombing. Other witnesses, it is alleged, were paid or offered money to give damaging evidence against the Libyan.

Professor Robert Black QC, the architect of the original trial and a leading academic lawyer, also believes that Megrahi was convicted on "very, very weak circumstantial" evidence.

Pierre Salinger, the former ABC News correspondent and a press spokesman for President Kennedy, believed, until his death in 2004, that Iran and Syria carried out the atrocity. He alleged a cover-up by the United States and Britain.

In 2003, Ahmed Own, Libya's ambassador to the United Nations, submitted a letter to the Security Council in which Libya accepted "responsibility for the actions of its officials" regarding the bombing.

Yet the following year, Sukri Ghanem, the Libyan Prime Minister, insisted the compensation payment was the "price of peace" with the West and was simply designed to remove sanctions

Lawyers for Megrahi had launched a second appeal over his conviction – the first was unsuccessful – but it was revealed on Friday that the convicted killer has now applied to abandon this action.

His supporters are optimistic he will be freed within days because of his serious illness. The Crown Office insists the conviction is safe and that no decision on his release has yet been taken by the Scottish Justice Secretary.

Paul McBride, a QC who advises the Tory party on law and order, said the Scottish Justice Secretary should resign over his handling of the case.

Mr McBride insisted that Mr MacAskill should have recalled Parliament to discuss the matter. The QC described the manner in which Megrahi’s possible release was being discussed as “beyond shameful”.

Top 5 Fast Food Value Menu Deals

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/107496/top-5-fast-food-value-menu-deals.html

Top 5 Fast Food Value Menu Deals
by Tara Struyk
Friday, August 14, 2009

Common wisdom suggests that it's cheaper to cook your own meals at home than it is to eat in a restaurant. But as the economy's slump continues, fast-food restaurants have been trumpeting the financial merits of their value menus, many of which offer filling food for a dollar or less.

With these companies' ability to buy food in mass quantities at much greater discounts than what you can get from even a discount grocer, can you really compete? Let's take a look the top five fast food values out there today.

Breaking It Down

To come up with per-serving prices for ingredients in these fast food items, we used their average or estimated retail costs. These will vary depending on where you live and where you shop. The cost of individual condiments was excluded for simplicity's sake.

No. 5 KFC: The "Snacker" Is Just That

KFC launched its 10-item value menu in February, but unlike some of the other chains on this list, only three of its value offerings fall under the $1 mark. The best value of the bunch is probably the Ultimate Cheese KFC Snacker, a 3-ounce breaded chicken strip covered in cheese sauce and lettuce on a dinner-roll sized bun.

At 115 grams, it's a considerable lightweight compared to the other value menu items on this list, which weigh in anywhere from 128 grams (Taco Bell) to 151 grams (McDonald's).

Per-Sandwich Cost at KFC: 99 cents
Per Sandwich Cost at Home:
-Chicken(prepared at home at $3/pound): 56 cents
-Dinner Roll: 15 cents
-Cheese Sauce: 4 cents
-Total: 75 cents + condiments and cooking time

Bottom Line: You can make this at home for less, but only if you can crack the Colonel's secret recipe.

No. 4 Burger King: Where's the Cheese?

There are more than a dozen value menu items at Burger King. The Whopper Junior, a standard burger with 2.2 ounces of beef, is the most substantial item, but unlike the other burgers on this list it does not include cheese. According to BeefRetail.org, the average price of regular ground beef as of March 2009 was $2.44.

Per-Burger Cost at Burger King: 99 cents (depending on where you live)
Per-Burger Cost at Home:
-Meat: 33 cents
-Bun: 25 cents
-Total: 58 cents + condiments and cooking time

Bottom Line: If you make your own version of a Junior Whopper, you can add a slice of cheese and a little extra meat and still get more food for $1.

No. 3 Taco Bell: Why Pay More?

Taco Bell's ‘Why Pay More?’ Value Menu has some of the lowest prices around, with 10 products priced at 79, 89 and 99 cents. This Mexican-inspired food goes for prices that you might see in, well, Mexico. The hot item on this menu is reportedly the Cheesy Double Beef Burrito, an eight-ounce giant with about 2.5 ounces of seasoned ground beef, cheese sauce, seasoned rice and red sauce.

Per-Burrito Cost at Taco Bell: 99 cents
Per Burrito Cost at Home:
-Meat: 38 cents
-Tortilla: 25 cents
-Cheese Sauce (prepared, 1/2 ounce): ~15 cents
-Rice (at a price of 4 cents per ounce and assuming two ounces): 8 cents
-Total: 86 cents + condiments and cooking time

Bottom Line: If you make a similar item at home, you might be cutting it close in terms of coming out ahead of this fast-food item, as tortillas can easily cost as much as 40 cents each, depending on where you shop. If you make your own tortillas, you could make a similar burrito for as little as 60 cents.

No.2 McDonald's: Budgets Are Lovin' It

The iconic Mcdonald's dollar menu has been around since 2002, and although it offers only a handful of items, they seem like a steal. A dollar-menu staple, something you could actually call "lunch", is the McDouble: two hamburger patties, one slice of cheese, condiments and a bun.

Per-Burger Cost at McDonalds: $1
Per-Burger Cost at Home:
-Meat: 49 cents
-Cheese: 20 cents
-Bun: 25 cents
-Total: 94 cents + condiments and the time it takes to cook it

Bottom Line: Assuming the cost of the condiments adds a few more cents, you can see that the McDouble is a tantalizingly good value.

No.1 Wendy's: It's Value

Wendy's doesn't have a signature sandwich but it does capitalize on its signature square burger patties. But does this chain offer a product that's "wayyyy better than fast food" in terms of value?

In a word: yes. Look at Wendy's Double Stack burger, one of the key items on its sizable Super Value Menu. It is advertised as a 99-cent item and consists of two 1.78 ounce hamburger patties, a cheese slice and condiments.

Per-Burger Cost at Wendy's: 99 cents
Per-Burger Cost at Home:
-Meat: 54 cents
-Bun: 25 cents
-Cheese: 20 cents
-Total: 99 cents +condiments and cooking time

Bottom Line: As it turns out, Wendy's really isn't cutting corners with its signature square burgers. If you can find a Wendy's location that's selling this item for 99 cents (some have bumped the price up to $1.49), you'll be sinking your teeth into the most beef you can get for less than a dollar.

Can I Take Your Order?

So, while in most cases you can't get better deal at the drive-through window than in the grocery aisle, if you stick to value menu items, the savings gleaned by flipping your own burgers are very small, particularly for top fast food restaurants like Wendy's and McDonalds.

It all depends on what you value most. If your top priorities are convenience and price, fast food chains may be the most budget-friendly way to fill your stomach. If you're worried about food quality - or your waistline - these cheap, filling fast food deals may not be your best bet.

Clinton remarks on 2000 election

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/13/hillary-clinton-compares-2000-election-to-nigeria/

Clinton remarks on 2000 election have pundits in uproar
David Edwards and Daniel Tencer
August 13, 2009

A political controversy has exploded surrounding Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s frank admission Wednesday that American democracy is vulnerable to subversion.

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, Clinton addressed the issue of corruption in elections, a common problem in the West African country. After urging Nigerians always to reject election-related violence, America’s top diplomat pointed out that the US has had its own electoral problems.

“Our democracy is still evolving,” Clinton said. “You know we’ve had all kinds of problems in some of our past elections as you might remember. In 2000, our presidential election came down to one state where the brother of the man running for president was the governor of the state, so we have our problems, too.”

In reaction, the UK Guardian opined, “The Republicans will seek to exploit Clinton’s comparison of the US elections with those of an African state and for breaking the convention that leaders do not criticize fellow domestic politicians while abroad.”

And indeed that appears to be the case. A spokesperson for former Florida governor Jeb Bush said Bush “is declining to weigh in on these ill-advised comments” and instead wished Clinton a “safe and successful” journey.

“When you criticize your own country as an official of that country it obviously undermines the authority of the government,” Ilya Shapiro, of the conservative-leaning Cato Institute told ABC News. “It casts a shadow on the legitimacy of the US government as we pursue our foreign affairs. I don’t think that helps.”

But others are coming to Clinton’s defense, saying that she only expressed what everybody knows to be true.

“I think she was doing the right by giving Nigerians the sense that we Americans, we’re not perfect either,” Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told ABC News. “All countries have problems.”

“There is not a single thing that is in dispute,” the Guardian quoted Democratic strategist James Carville as saying. Carville, credited with helping Bill Clinton win the White House in 1992, said “there has to be a time when the secretary of state speaks the truth.”

The jury remains out on whether Clinton’s candid approach to international relations will help the US achieve its foreign policy goals, but this is not the first controversy to hit the secretary of state during her 11-day African tour.

On Monday in Kinshasa, Congo, when Clinton was asked about her husband’s views on a financial matter involving Congo and China, she snapped, “My husband is not secretary of state, I am.”

“You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?” she asked. “If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion, I am not going to be channeling my husband.”

On Thursday Clinton arrived in Liberia, where she is expected to show support for Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the country’s president and Africa’s only female leader. Sirleaf is under pressure to resign following an inquiry into Liberia’s civil war, which took the lives of 300,000 people between 1989 and 2003, before Sirleaf was elected.

Mansonites Converge at El Coyote

http://www.laweekly.com/2009-08-13/columns/the-last-supper/

The Last Supper: Mansonites Converge at El Coyote
By Skylaire Alfvegren
August 12, 2009

El Coyote is Movieland’s idea of a Mexican restaurant: The lighting is garish, the margaritas stiff. Waitresses clad in petticoated, off-the-shoulder cotton fiestas have been serving, as they call it, “authentic California-style Mexican food” to actors and others since 1931, but the blood-red leather booth in the back played host to its most infamous party on the night of August 8, 1969, when actress Sharon Tate dined there with Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski and Abigail Folger. Later that night, the group would be slain by followers of Charles Manson in Tate’s home at 10050 Cielo Drive. Tall, blond, and forever gripping a camcorder, odd-teur Jon Aes-Nihil (director of the gory cult classic Manson Family Movies) gathered his unusual band of miscreants for “the Last Supper” this past Saturday night, as he has done every August 8 since 1979. Manson’s long-standing appeal? “It was the first time the hippies struck back,” one diner commented. Or was it?

Never a true crime buff nor serial-killer dilettante, I had long viewed Manson symbolically — a guitar-strumming ecoterrorist with a Messiah complex, who effectively extinguished the Age of Aquarius, but on this, the 40th anniversary of the Tate/LaBianca slayings, a different picture emerged.

Manson, suspected of being both an FBI informant and agent provocateur, may well have been a patsy. “The FBI took out the Black Panthers, the Yippies, the Weather Underground, and it’s a contention that the murders were orchestrated,” author Adam Gorightly pointed out between sips from a margarita. Manson’s connections to military intelligence, the Church of Scientology, government-sponsored mind-control experiments and the ’60s occult underground ripple through The Shadow Over Santa Susana, Gorightly’s definitive Manson tome, recently rereleased by Creation Books.

Manson referred to his family as “slippies,” and only grew his hair long in the months preceding the murders; but because of Manson, “it was a long time before you saw longhairs portrayed in a positive light.”

Aes-Nihil’s group of historians, writers, musicians and filmmakers traded stories of the weird, twisted Hollywood of old, attracting the attention of a pudgy industry type who, with no prompting, described the “peaceful vibe” surrounding Tate’s house when Trent Reznor recorded “Helter Skelter” there with a not-yet-famous Marilyn Manson. Archivist Aes-Nihil (short for “aesthetic nihilism”) poked his ever-present camera in the man’s face, adding to the hundreds of hours of Manson-related footage he’s acquired over the decades, smirking all the while.

In all the years I’d known Aes-Nihil, I’d always thought it was the Family’s creep factor that had attracted him. But “there’s infinitely more to the Manson thing than Tex Watson killing people,” he explained. “I’m obsessed with the effect the murders had on the ’60s, since I was there, part of a group somewhat like the Family. When the story came out, we didn’t believe it for a second.”

A man of few words, he resumed shooting the party’s chatter: Church of Satan founder Anton La Vey had cursed Tate’s husband, director Roman Polanski, after they’d had a falling-out on the set of Rosemary’s Baby. Drug-addled orgies at the house on Cielo Drive were filmed and later sold on the black market by crooked LAPD cops, who’d stolen them from the crime scene. Family member Patricia Krenwinkel, in correspondence with researcher John Judge, swore she had been a victim of mind control. The acid Manson gave his followers was allegedly of the same, government-issued variety “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz had been dosed with while in the military. Standard dinner-party conversation.

Gathering the assembled for a postdinner portrait, Aes-Nihil continued: “Charlie and Sharon [Tate] have been baptized in the well of eternity via mass culture and universal myth. As for Charlie, he’s a modern-day Nietzsche.” This is apparent, he says, in Manson’s unedited interviews. “If a lot of what Charlie has said had been attributed to someone who is politically correct, it would be hailed as genius.”

I heard him out, knowing that many people don’t, and smiled for his camera.

Xbox 360 Elite dropping to $299 (finally)?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10308200-1.html

August 12, 2009
Xbox 360 Elite dropping to $299 (finally)?
by Scott Stein

Treat this right now as very likely, but still a rumor--a photo of a catalog page posted to Kotaku shows the 120GB hard drive-and-HDMI Xbox 360 Elite going for $299. The Meijir catalog (a Midwest store chain) in question is slated for August 30, which would mean a nice holiday surprise for future Xbox 360 buyers.

Other rumors have it that the price-dropped Elite and the bare-bones, hard-drive-free Arcade system will be the only 360s left on the market. It's a move that makes sense, since 120GB is not exactly a luxurious amount of storage space anymore, and is far more suitable for the mainstream than a fine-in-2005-but-now-piddling 20GB.

The 360 wasn't the system that most needed a price drop, after all. But then again, Sony might be following close behind with a cheaper (and redesigned) counterpunch of their own.

This leaves the Xbox 360 Elite at a price that's only $50 more than a Wii. And, for that price, you get a system that streams Netflix, plays DVDs, has robust online gameplay, and has far more storage than Nintendo's white box (even adding in a mountain of SD cards).

While we have absolutely no problem with getting more Xbox 360 for less, this raises a rather sharp sticking point with the prices of Microsoft's proprietary Xbox hard drives. An impassioned rant from Gizmodo accurately and appropriately skewers the currently ludicrous $160 retail cost of the 120GB hard drive. When half a terabyte can be had for the same--and when Microsoft, after all, wants us to buy more downloads than ever before--this hardly seems logical. Then again, maybe hard drive price drops/capacity increases are also on the horizon. In fact, wouldn't that be expected? If 120GB is the mainstream, there has to be a larger capacity to upgrade to.

Or, even better: Wi-Fi built in, and a slimmer, more reliable 360. How about that?

Scott Stein, a New York Jets fan and CNET senior associate editor, has written about tech, entertainment, video games, and viral culture for outlets including Laptop, Wired, Maxim, Esquire Online, Asylum, and Men's Journal. He also appears on the Digital City podcast. In his spare time, you might see him performing improv in New York City (when he's not being a dad).

Acupuncture boosts effects of painkillers

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2009/08/acupuncture-boosts-effects-of-painkillers-whether-natural-or-prescription.html

Acupuncture boosts effects of painkillers, natural or prescription
August 10, 2009

High-tech images of the brains of chronic pain sufferers have found that the ancient practice of acupuncture fights pain by making key brain cells more sensitive to the pain-dampening effects of opioid chemicals. The study, published online in the August issue of the journal NeuroImage, comes less than a year after the publication of a controversial study that concluded acupuncture was no more effective than sham treatment at reducing pain.

Researchers at the University of Michigan's Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center used a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner to view the brains of 20 women diagnosed with fibromyalgia who reported suffering nerve and muscle pain at least 50% of the time. The PET scans were conducted during each woman's first acupuncture session and, a month later, her eighth.

In the regions of the brain that process and dampen pain signals -- the amygdala, caudate, cingula, thalamus and insula -- the PET scans showed an increase in the receptivity -- and possibly the number -- of brain cells to which opioid substances bind. Study author Richard E. Harris said that suggests that acupuncture appears to make the body more responsive to opioid painkillers.

But the mainstay of traditional Chinese medicine also appears to enhance the body's ability to regulate pain naturally, Harris said. Many of the analgesic chemicals the body produces, including endorphins (the source of what endurance athletes call "the runner's high") and enkephalins (which act to tamp down the sensation of pain), also bind to the opioid receptors. So if acupuncture treatments enhance those chemicals' ability to find a receptor to bind to, these natural painkillers work better as well.

Harris, a molecular and cell biologist at the University of Michigan and a licensed acupuncturist, said the group's findings are consistent with research that has found patients treated with acupuncture before surgery often need less post-operative medication to manage their pain. The acupuncture in these cases may have the effect of sensitizing the brain's opioid receptors to medication, making it work better.

The study may even support the controversial earlier finding that sham acupuncture works as well as real acupuncture to reduce pain, but that the two work in to reduce pain in different ways. In that experiment, patients seemed to gain considerable pain relief merely by a procedure that inserted needles into the body randomly, as oppose to following the paths of energy meridians that guide needle placement in acupuncture.

The random sinking of needles through the skin may prompt the body to increase its production of pain-dampening endorphins and enkephalins, Harris surmised. True acupuncture may work differently: Its painkilling effect may come not from boosting the supply of circulating natural analgesics, but by improving the ability of those chemicals to dock at a brain cell and exert their painkilling effects.

While many patients may turn to acupuncture as an alternative to conventional medication, Harris said his group's study suggests that the two means of pain relief can complement each other.

"I don't see them as mutually exclusive, and in some cases, they may work synergistically," Harris said.

-- Melissa Healy