August 24, 2006

Christmas Countdown
http://home.valornet.com/sabruf2/countchr.html

Color me "surprised"
France Wants Only 'Symbolic' Force in Lebanon
8/17/2006 -- Countries that could contribute to an expanded U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon were to meet Thursday to find out how the troops will operate, and U.N. officials hoped many would commit soldiers to the force.

France, meanwhile, wants to send a small, purely symbolic contingent to the force, and the United Nations is trying to convince French officials that such a decision would be devastating, a news report said Thursday…http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/8/17/70648.shtml?s=lh

Staircase death lands Brighton homeowner in trouble
Boston: Aug 22, 2006 -A Brighton homeowner is in trouble with the city because an alleged break-in artist fell to his death early yesterday from a set of rickety exterior stairs attached to the man’s two-story house.

...A man who said he owned the home...told the Herald yesterday that the intruder climbed the wrought-iron spiral steps at 2:20 a.m. The interloper was kicking in a door that led to the owner’s entrance when the stairs gave way, the man said.

...Timberlake said the owner, who lives on the second floor, is in the process of appealing a violation given about six months ago for the same staircase…

Boston police are investigating. The interloper was taken to St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center after the collapse and pronounced dead. Police did not release his identity.
It’s an anti-break-in artist device! Only in Boston is a burglar an "artist". I'll bet the family of the dead guy sues, regardless of the circumstances
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=153698

Glaciers 'shrinking for 100 years'
August 22, 2006 GREENLAND'S glaciers have been shrinking for the past century, according to a Danish study published today, suggesting that the ice melt is not a recent phenomenon caused by global warming.

"This study, which covers 247 of 350 glaciers on Disko, is the most comprehensive ever conducted on the movements of Greenland's glaciers," glaciologist Jacob Clement Yde, who carried out the study with Niels Tvis Knudsen, said.

Using maps from the 19th century and current satellite observations, the scientists were able to conclude that "70 per cent of the glaciers have been shrinking regularly since the end of the 1880s at a rate of around eight metres per year," Mr Yde said.

...The shrinking of the glaciers since the 19th century is "the result of the atmosphere's natural warming, following volcanic eruptions for example and greenhouse gases, created by human activities, which have aggravated the situation further," he said.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20211652-1702,00.html

43,443 people died in traffic accidents in 2005
...A total of 43,443 people died in traffic accidents last year the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said.
(Something to remember the next time the press or some self-serving politician throws the latest casualty figure in Iraq in your face. If we announced with fanfare every traffic death every day there would be nearly 120 announcements a day in the US....)

...The agency said 2.7 million people were injured in motor vehicle crashes... (or almost 7,400 announcements need to be made every day)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/22/AR2006082201152.html

Stuart Middle School teacher burns U.S. flags in class
Louisville, KY- A Stuart Middle School teacher has been removed from the classroom after he burned two American flags in class during a lesson on freedom of speech, Jefferson County Public Schools officials said.

Dan Holden, who teaches seventh-grade social studies, burned small flags in two different classes Friday and asked students to write an opinion paper about it, district spokeswoman Lauren Roberts said…
Hey it’s not like the teacher could actually ask anyone to write about freedom of speech without burning a flag….
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060822/NEWS01/608220378

Calling Al Gore!! Where Are You?
Hurricanes: According to www.weatherstreet.com the National Weather Service predicted 12 to 15 named storms by December of this year. There were 27 last year. We are below the prediction.

Cooling Ocean ...surface temperatures on the world's oceans are getting cooler says a paper to be published next month in Geophysical Research Letters, between 2003 and 2005 globally averaged temperatures in the upper levels of the ocean have cooled. They've cooled not just a little but a lot. Hurricanes are formed and fueled in the western Atlantic ocean. Sea surface temperatures there are now below normal.

Glaciers: A soon-to-be released study by a Danish university says that Greenland's glaciers have been shrinking for most the past 100 years. The study of 247 of the 350 glaciers on Disko island shows that 70% of these glaciers have been retreating at a rate of about 8 meters a year since the end of the 1880s. There was apparently a real surge in glacier melting caused by a warming of the earth's atmosphere during the 1920s.

More good news you may not hear on network news or your newspaper:

August 22, 2006
Brisk productivity rates, 5.5 million new jobs over the past three years.
Historically low 4.8 percent unemployment rate.
Recent strong numbers for retail sales and industrial production suggest a 3.5 percent economic growth rate in the second half of 2006.
Tax receipts are growing around 14 percent for the second straight year, the biggest gain in a quarter of a century.
Income-tax collections, bolstered by the success of owner-operated business entrepreneurs and other self-employed, are helping lift these revenues.
Non-withheld revenues from lower-taxed capital gains and dividends are paying for themselves. Total tax receipts in 2006 will come in around $2.4 trillion, roughly $400 billion above the tax-collection peak of 2000.
The Congressional Budget Office now acknowledge that deficit projections were $100 billion too high.
Bond rates are coming down.
Mortgage rates are now declining.
Stock markets continue to rise, and are within shouting distance of five-year highs.
Unleaded gasoline futures have been dropping, suggesting relief at the pump.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/LawrenceKudlow/2006/08/22/on_the_low-tax_economy,_bush_has_the_story_right

Doctors test ways to grow knee cartilage using adult stem cells

August 22, 2006 -- Doctors are testing new ways to spur cartilage to regrow in damaged knees, from implanted "cartilage plugs" to injections of bone-marrow stem cells.

...The potential new options are being tried first in people who injured their knees and thus need small amounts of cartilage to regrow. But if they truly work, the techniques one day might offer hope for arthritis sufferers, too, whose cartilage over time completely erodes.

...Manufacturer Smith & Nephew, which just bought the plugs' original maker, is funding early stage research to see if the plugs could be expanded to cover a larger surface.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/1500AP_HealthBeat_Knee_Repair.html

Fewer Vietnam vets had stress disorder than previously claimed

The widely cited estimate that 1-in-3 Vietnam veterans suffered post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their service may be too high, researchers are reporting.

...The new figures, published in the journal Science, come years after critics began charging that the 1988 estimates had to be inflated. One argument was that, with only 15 percent of troops in Vietnam serving in combat roles, it was improbable that more than 30 percent would develop PTSD.

... besides examining records and recordings from the original study's diagnostic interviews, they used extensive military records that weren't available at the time of the 1988 study to corroborate veterans' exposure to combat stress.

… in some cases, veterans who were diagnosed with PTSD in the original study had symptoms that did not substantially impair their daily functioning -- a point that is used in PTSD diagnosis now, but not in the 1988 study.

In other cases, vets' psychological difficulties actually began before their Vietnam service, and not in response to their war experience.

The researchers found no evidence, however, of veterans exaggerating or lying about their combat experience.

In the end, Dohrenwend and his colleagues concluded that 18.7 percent of the study participants suffered PTSD as a result of their service....
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2006-08-21T142222Z_01_PAR151663_RTRIDST_0_HEALTH-VETS-DISORDER-DC.XML

David Bennett <><
http://www.freewill-predestination.com
http://www.knology.net/~lonesomedove