Eideard

Do I really need to go to New York?
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Continental Airlines Wednesday apologized to former Indian president APJ Abdul Kalam for frisking him before a recent flight to New York.

The apology came a day after Indian civil aviation authorities lodged a police complaint against the U.S. carrier in New Delhi, accusing it of gross violation of Indian security protocols that forbid pre-embarkation body checks on a number of dignitaries, including former presidents…

“We have tendered a formal apology to Dr. Kalam and we sincerely hope he will fly with us again,” Continental said in a statement…

But it noted that the regulations of the TSA and its Indian equivalent, the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, were sometimes incompatible.

“We hope the respective government authorities resolve these differences at the earliest in order to avoid any recurrence of this situation in the future,” the airline said.

After all, the whole world must recognize they are required to live by the rules and standards of the United States. If that includes the codified paranoia of the idiots at Homeland Security and the TSA – learn to live with it, folks. Our clowns politicians are in charge.

Plastic Logic, which is still gestating its entry in the new market for electronic reading devices, is disclosing a little bit more about its upcoming product.

After announcing earlier this week that Barnes & Noble would manage its electronic book store, the company said Wednesday that AT&T’s 3G network will provide the mobile broadband connection for the device, which is due to go on sale at the beginning of next year.

The Mountain View, Calif., company declined to disclose any more information about the pricing, or whether it will charge consumers monthly for that wireless connectivity. Amazon.com’s Kindle accesses content through Sprint Nextel’s wireless network, although users are not charged for the service and many probably do not even know their Kindle uses Sprint to download books and access the Web.

The Plastic Logic Reader, the size of a regular piece of paper, will be slightly larger than the Kindle DX and sport a touch-screen. Plastic Logic says the device will be targeted at business users, which typically suggests a higher price and the need to lure more affluent customers.

Unlike the Kindle, the Plastic Logic Reader will also be able to access Wi-Fi hotspots.

That last sentence pretty much guarantees AT&T’s 3G access will require a monthly charge.

Frankly, I’m looking forward to trying one – sooner or other.

In 2003, researchers at a federal agency proposed a long-term study of 10,000 drivers to assess the safety risk posed by cellphone use behind the wheel. They sought the study based on evidence that such multitasking was a serious and growing threat on America’s roadways.

But such an ambitious study never happened. And the researchers’ agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress.

Now, the full body of research is being made public for the first time by two consumer advocacy groups, which filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the documents. The Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen provided a copy to The New York Times, which is publishing the documents on its Web site…

Critics say that rationale and the failure of the Transportation Department, which oversees the highway agency, to more vigorously pursue distracted driving has cost lives and allowed to blossom a culture of behind-the-wheel multitasking.

“We’re looking at a problem that could be as bad as drunk driving, and the government has covered it up,” said Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety…

The highway safety researchers estimated that cellphone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents overall in 2002.

The researchers also shelved a draft letter they had prepared for Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta to send, warning states that hands-free laws might not solve the problem.

That letter said that hands-free headsets did not eliminate the serious accident risk. The reason: a cellphone conversation itself, not just holding the phone, takes drivers’ focus off the road, studies showed…

At the time, Congress had warned the agency not to use its research to lobby states. Dr. Runge said transit officials told him he could jeopardize billions of dollars of its financing if Congress perceived the agency had crossed the line into lobbying.

Which would be hilarious if we weren’t talking about stupidity while driving and the deaths resulting. This took place in the bowels of a federal administration that made lobbying an Olympic-class sport, after all.

RTFA. If you’re concerned with surviving your daily drive to-and-from work, there’s not much new. Multitasking [what a misnomer] drivers put your own life at risk and they obviously could care less for their own dull glimmer of humanity.

I could have posted pics of Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin
and Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, but this water hog was cuter.

Governors of Georgia, Alabama and Florida had 19 years to reach to an agreement over how to share the water from Lake Lanier.

Now a federal judge has given Congress three years to work out the dispute….

The governors of Florida and Alabama said they’re willing to return to negotiations, but Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue seemed to sound a different note.

“I will use this opportunity not only to appeal the judge’s decision but, most importantly, to urge Congress to address the realities of modern reservoir usage,” Perdue said. “The judge’s ruling allows a three-year window for either congressional action or an agreement by the states, and we will work diligently with Georgia’s delegation and members of Congress to re-establish the proper use of federal reservoirs throughout the country.”

In his ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson said it was illegal for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates Lake Lanier, to draw water from the lake to meet Atlanta’s needs. The Corps has been making such withdrawals for decades….

The court said Lanier was not intended to be Atlanta’s water supply, and the Corps may not use it that way unless Congress authorizes it to do so.

If Congress fails to pass a water-sharing bill in three years, Magnuson said he would order Atlanta’s withdrawals cut to 1970s levels, a measure that the judge acknowledged would be draconian.

Given the arrogance of the state of Georgia and the city of Atlanta on this and similar issues, my sympathy is limited. Whenever the subject of overdevelopment and poor planning is raised, noses are raised high in the air as if citizens are little school children incapable of comprehending adult issues. Now a federal judge has ruled that Atlanta has essentially been stealing water all of these years. Good for him. Maybe the governor and the mayor of Atlanta will negotiate more like grown-ups now.

The longest solar eclipse in this century is scheduled to become visible on the west coast of India at dawn on Wednesday (NASA has images and charts showing where the eclipse will be visible and when).

The event is drawing scientists and eclipse enthusiasts from around the world, eager for a truly once in a lifetime experience. But for millions of Indians, the rare astronomical event is a source of dread.

The pending eclipse has become a stage where fact and myth, modern science and Hindu mythology are competing for public acceptance….

For outsiders, the extent to which superstition still figures in personal decisions may be a surprise.

For many Indians of all classes, astrology is an active and vital part of everyday life. Couples consult astrologers about auspicious days to marry. The days deemed to be most fortuitous can sometimes seem like citywide holidays, with scores of marriages filling the city with the wail of brass bands and the thump of fireworks – both common features at Indians’ routinely elaborate wedding ceremonies….

Indian soothsayers have warned that pregnant women should cover the windows and stay indoors on Wednesday, lest the dark forces associated with the eclipse deform their unborn children. Astrologers in India have warned of impending terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and civil wars too.

Hindu mythology blames eclipses on the demon Rahu – who is variously depicted as a snake or a dragon or a disembodied head – who swallows the sun.

Fortunately our western society has been cleansed for the most part of superstition. Thank God we are washed in the blood of the lamb.

In many places across the South you can walk in the footsteps of slaves, and if you understand the history, it is not a happy journey. The same is true at Friendfield Plantation outside Georgetown, South Carolina.

It’s not exactly “Gone With the Wind,” but what makes this overgrown 3,300 acres of marsh and pine trees stand out is this: The family of first lady Michelle Obama believes her great-great grandfather was held as a slave here and labored in the mosquito-infested rice fields.

It makes Friendfield Plantation a symbol of something more than servitude. It’s the symbol of something that’s never happened before, one important segment of an American family’s journey from the humiliation of slavery to the very top of the nation’s ruling class.

It’s not a museum. It’s just private land, still with shadows of its past. Friendfield’s most distinctive historical feature, perhaps, is the dirt road known as Slave Street.

Six white-washed little shacks are all that remain of the slave quarters, even though rows of these houses once stood on the property. About 350 slaves lived here during the 19th century…

They would have been crowded: probably one or two families living in a space smaller than a modern-day garage…

All that’s known about Jim Robinson’s life comes from the few remaining records that mention him. Slaves weren’t documented as individuals in the census, nor in life and death certificates. They were property, not people.

It probably never crossed Jim Robinson’s mind, as a slave in a white-washed cabin, that one day his great-great granddaughter would be living in a white house so very, very different from his own.

RTFA. Well done. A few talented people still remain at CNN – a story worth reading, reading to your kids, as well.

A vast cosmic collision that left a dark scar the size of the Earth on the surface of Jupiter has been discovered by an amateur astronomer using a home-made telescope.

Anthony Wesley spotted the extraordinary impact on Sunday night while watching Jupiter from the backyard of his rural home in Murrumbateman, near Canberra, Australia. He nearly missed it because he was also watching the final rounds of the Open Championship on television.

Mr Wesley, 44, an IT consultant who designed his telescope himself, told The Times how he saw a strange black blob creep across the planet’s surface.

“About 11pm I went inside to have a break and watch the golf, and by the time I came back out at about 1am the impact point had rotated around into view,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. I thought, ‘That wasn’t there before’, and then I realised Jupiter had actually been hit by something.”

Mr Wesley immediately set about alerting professional astronomers to his discovery, some of whom trained more powerful telescopes on Jupiter after seeing his e-mailed images.

Scientists at Nasa confirmed that his observations were of an impact rather than a storm. It is thought to have been caused by a small comet or cometary fragment, about 1km in diameter, which would have struck the planet at a speed of about 60km per second (about 135,000mph)…

Were an object of similar size to strike the Earth, it would cause devastation, though not quite over so large an area. Jupiter’s greater gravity will have magnified the effects.

Ian Crawford, lecturer in planetary sciences at Birkbeck, London, said: “Even if the impact would not have been quite so bad on Earth, it underscores the danger to us of such impacts. We wouldn’t want to be hit by a 1km fragment: it would be devastating. You’d expect it to excavate a crater 20km across…”

Mr Wesley, an IT consultant, said that he spends at least 20 hours a week looking at Jupiter — his “main passion” in the sky.

When asked to explain the appeal of Jupiter, the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the solar system, Mr Wesley said: “It’s just such a dynamic planet.

“Even when there are no earth-shattering events happening it just changes day to day and has so many patterns it is fascinating to watch.”

Bravo! Good for you, dude.

Hmm. That’s about how much time I spend each week – online.

The sex scandal involving Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, and a prostitute deepened today with the release of sensational new audio tapes purportedly proving their encounters late last year.

In the second series of tapes and transcripts to be published by the left-leaning weekly L’Espresso, the escort, Patrizia D’Addario, is recorded discussing her appointment with Mr Berlusconi in October with the man who allegedly hired her to go to the Prime Minister’s official residence

Mr Tarantini…warned Ms D’Addario that the 72-year-old Italian leader does not use condoms. At an apparent meeting held with Ms D’Addario and another unnamed woman in October 2008, Mr Tarantini briefed them ahead of their evening with the premier…

D’Addario: And a thousand for the night.

Tarantini: I have already given you a thousand and if you stay with him he will give you a gift on his own.. ah.. you will also see that he doesn’t use condoms…

D’Addario:.. But it is not going to happen without it. How will I feel safe?

Tarantini: But… it’s Berlusconi…

This slimeball is sleazy enough to take over leadership of the Republican Party in the United States. I wonder if John Boehner could get his citizenship expedited?

When Nathaniel Roe, 92, died at his 18th-century farmhouse here the morning of June 6, his family did not call a funeral home to handle the arrangements.

Instead, Mr. Roe’s children, like a growing number of people nationwide, decided to care for their father in death as they had in the last months of his life. They washed Mr. Roe’s body, dressed him in his favorite Harrods tweed jacket and red Brooks Brothers tie and laid him on a bed so family members could privately say their last goodbyes.

The next day, Mr. Roe was placed in a pine coffin made by his son, along with a tuft of wool from the sheep he once kept. He was buried on his farm in a grove off a walking path he traversed each day.

“It just seemed like the natural, loving way to do things,” said Jennifer Roe-Ward, Mr. Roe’s granddaughter. “It let him have his dignity.”

Advocates say the number of home funerals, where everything from caring for the dead to the visiting hours to the building of the coffin is done at home, has soared in the last five years, putting the funerals “where home births were 30 years ago,” according to Chuck Lakin, a home funeral proponent and coffin builder in Waterville, Me.

The cost savings can be substantial, all the more important in an economic downturn. The average American funeral costs about $6,000 for the services of a funeral home, in addition to the costs of cremation or burial. A home funeral can be as inexpensive as the cost of pine for a coffin (for a backyard burial) or a few hundred dollars for cremation or several hundred dollars for cemetery costs.

The Roes spent $250.

RTFA. Thoughtful, useful, productive. It’s something I’ve considered and the best I came up with before reading this article was pre-paying for cremation – and having my ashes turned over to my [much younger] wife to do with as she wishes. I kind of prefer widely scattered fertilizer, myself.

Police Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan says the Taser was the best choice

A man in Western Australia was engulfed in flames when police officers fired a Taser stun gun at him.

Police say they used the Taser on Ronald Mitchell, 36, when he ran at them carrying a container of petrol and a cigarette lighter.

They said that Mr Mitchell, who lives in a remote Aboriginal community, had been sniffing petrol. They suggested the cigarette lighter started the fire.

Mr Mitchell is in a critical condition in hospital with third degree burns.

The Police Commissioner told reporters: “The only other choice they would have had is to use a police-issue firearm, and the consequences would almost certainly have been far more grave.”

I hadn’t realized that police departments are down to only two choices when it comes to conflict with a suspect: taser – or shoot ‘em?