The Coming Second Civil War?

According to Igor Panarin, a popular Russian academic and former KGB agent that currently serves as the dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats, by the fall of this year, the United States will be beginning its slide into a bitter, yet much speedier, Second Civil War that will see the United States split into six separate, smaller nations, heavily influenced by foreign governments.

In my lifetime, everything from Red Dawn down to Jericho has depicted that the United States would eventually disband into roughly a handful of separate nations, but according to Panarin, not only is this really in the cards for us, but it is right around the corner.

So, how is this all supposed to come about? According to Panarin, our economic slide will eventually result in a total economic collapse, with extremely hard times quickly resulting in a moral collapse. With their economies in trouble, and their populations on a slippery slope, the wealthier, yet more economically troubled states will be forced to halt the delivery of state dollars to the federal government, essentially financially seceding from the U.S.

In these hard economic times, with loyalty to the federal government quickly waning, social unrest and upheaval will not be far behind, according to Panarin. The U.S. will split along ethnic lines and shortly, thereafter, officially break up. 

Not long after the break up, foreign powers will move in an exert their influence. Get ready to learn Chinese, because according to Panarin, the western states will form under the banner "The California Republic" and come under Chinese influence or even Chinese rule. The southern states from New Mexico to Florida will form "The Texas Republic" and come under Mexico's influence, or rule.

The northeastern states from Tennessee and South Carolina on up to Maine will form "Atlantic America" and successfully maintain their independence from foreign powers until they are allowed to join the European Union. The northern central states from Montana to Colorado on over to Ohio will become "The Central North-American Republic" and will align themselves with the great Canadian power to the north.

Alaska is going to quickly come under Russian rule and Hawaii will quickly come under Japanese or Chinese rule. According to Panarin, all of this will be solidified and new maps will be going to press by June or July of 2010.

I already have my application in for Supreme Dictator of The California Republic, though that application also petitions for a more catchy name. In the event my application is denied, we already have the little Bavarian town we're moving to picked out.

Panarin's views are gaining ground in a very anti-American Russia and he counters critics by citing the wall of skepticism that French economist Emmanuel Todd received when he predicted the economically-driven fall of the Soviet Union in 1976.

The Ant and the Grasshopper, Modernized for Today's America

In the original version of this tale that we all know so well, the ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold. The moral of the story is to be responsible for yourself!

There is a new version of the story circulating on the Internet that has updated and modernized the tale to better fit today’s America. In this new version, the ant still works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper still thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. But in today’s America, the lazy Grasshopper is not left out in the cold to die. Come winter, he calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others, like himself, are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide a split-screen image of the shivering grasshopper on one side and the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food on the other.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast. “How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?” they cry out. Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, “It's Not Easy Being Green.” Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.” Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

To quote David Allen Grier, “America, have you lost your damned mind?!"

"How Long Do We Have?" - A Follow Up...

You may recall my article from November 5, “How Long Do We Have?” in which I wrote and cited the following:

“According to Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, the United States of America has already outlived its expiration date. About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, who was studying the rise and fall of democracies wrote:

‘A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.’”

I would like to add to my article of November 5th, the following additional facts that were pointed out in an email I received, which cited a recent BusinessWeek Magazine article:

"Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2008 Presidential election:

-Number of States won by: Democrats: 20; Republicans: 30
-Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000; Republicans: 2,427,000
-Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million; Republicans: 143 million
-Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2; Republicans: 2.1"

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Republicans won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens. Democratic territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in rented or government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare...

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the ‘complacency and apathy’ phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the ‘governmental dependency’ phase.”

These election results are further proof that not only is our democracy over the hill, we are continuing to accelerate down the other side. I stress again today, as I did on November 5th, that this process is reversible and that we can turn this country back around, but it would be one of the few times in history where a democracy has succeeded in doing so.

No Voter Turnout

Pillsbury Mayor Darrel Brudevold reports that turnout in the city’s primary election is usually fairly high. “I dare say a half-dozen people usually make it to the polls,” he said.

That half-dozen represents about a quarter of the residents in the Barnes County farming community, in southeastern North Dakota. On June 10, 2008, however, no one showed up to vote, not even those on the ballot.

Brudevold ran unopposed for re-election. His wife, Ruth, and Dan Lindseth faced no challengers for their alderman seats. “Everybody has got a job and they’re busy,” Brudevold said. “It just worked out that nobody seemed to go down there to the polls.”

Only about 11 people live in Pillsbury proper, and the remainder of the residents live on farms outside the city. There is no precinct in town, so residents must drive about 12 miles to neighboring Sibley to cast their votes. Brudevold’s wife, Ruth, runs the beauty shop and is the town’s postmaster. She said she was too busy with work to make it to the polls. Brudevold said he intended to vote, but that he had crops to tend.

Barnes County Auditor Ed McGough said those in office can stay there and appoint people, including themselves, to the jobs until the next election. “I presume things will stay the same,” Brudevold said. “We’re just a little village, and when you’re elected to one of those jobs, well, once you get it, you got it.”

The council meets about five times a year, Brudevold said. Members are each paid $48 annually, and a good portion of that goes for doughnuts at the meetings or gas to get there, he said. “Not everybody usually makes it to the meetings, so it really doesn’t get out of hand,” he said. “The only time we really get people to show up is when we want to raise taxes - then everybody shows up.”

They Don't Make Dells Like They Used To

I'm back to blogging after a brief heitus. I won't get too deep into the details that led to a week-long break, but let me just say that they don't make Dells like they used to.

I bought an Inspiron 8200 way back in 2001 and know that it would still be going strong today had I not spilled a bottle of water on the keyboard in September of 2006.

On the other hand, the newer work-horse Inspiron 1300 that I bought in September 2006 to replace my 8200 is already on its way to the green recycling center.

I've converted my everyday "computering" over to the Inspiron 9400 that I bought some three years ago as our home computer, but have used very seldom.

It has a large and beautiful screen, but also has a huge case, and weighs about twice as much as my 1300 did, but I'll make do. We'll see how long the 9400 goes, but we might be switching brands once the 9400 has run its course.

Switching brands is not something I normally do, but like I said, they just don't make Dells like they used to.

How Long Do We Have?

There is one thing that we in the business community need to clearly worry about as a result of last night's election, and that is whether or not we are going to be seeing an increase in our business taxes. According to the Wall Street Journal, 50% of small businesses could now see their taxes increase in the next four years.

While we would like it to not be the case, when business taxes increase, we need to either cover the additional expense by growing our business, or cutting back on essential spending.

For many businesses, economic conditions like the ones we are facing today make it very difficult to create business growth. Despite the best intentions of politicians, when businesses have to cut back spending, the chances that business will have to reduce work forces greatly increase.

As we take stock of last night's results and take a posture of waiting to see, let me share something with you that made its way to my email inbox this morning:

According to Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, the United States of America has already outlived its expiration date. About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, who was studying the rise and fall of democracies wrote:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.

A Flying-Fish Record Recorded

A Japanese TV crew has filmed what is believed to be the longest flight of a flying fish ever recorded.

The NHK television network said one of its camera crews captured the 45-second flight from a ferry near Kuchino-erabu Island in southwestern Japan.

The crew was reportedly on its way to shoot footage for a nature documentary.

The fish can be seen occasionally beating its tail against the surface of the water to keep itself aloft.

The ferry was traveling at speed of about 20 mph (30 kilometers per hour) during the encounter, NHK said.

More than 50 species of flying fish, in the marine family known as Exocoetidae, are found in warmer ocean waters worldwide. They can rise out of the water to avoid predators underneath, and stretch out their long pectoral fins to glide through the air.

Usually the fish remain airborne for just a few seconds before landing back in the water - but as Monday’s video demonstrated, they can give themselves another boost with their tail fins.

The previous record for a fish’s compound flight was 42 seconds, reported from Florida by a sea captain with a stopwatch in 1928. A 45-second flight may well be close to the physical limit for a flying fish, since the creature must suspend brachial respiration in the air, NHK reported.

Amazing Ship Find

A 22-gun British warship that sank during the American Revolution and has long been regarded as one of the “Holy Grail” shipwrecks in the Great Lakes has been discovered at the bottom of Lake Ontario, astonishingly well-preserved in the cold, deep water.

Shipwreck enthusiasts Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville used side-scanning sonar and an unmanned submersible to locate the HMS Ontario, which was lost with barely a trace and as many as 130 people aboard during a gale in 1780.

The 80-foot sloop of war is the oldest shipwreck and the only fully intact British warship ever found in the Great Lakes.

“To have a Revolutionary War vessel that’s practically intact is unbelievable. It’s an archaeological miracle,” said Canadian author Arthur Britton Smith, who chronicled the history of the HMS Ontario in a 1997 book, “The Legend of the Lake.”

The finders of the wreck said they regard it as a war grave and have no plans to raise it or remove any of its artifacts. They said the ship is still considered the property of the British Admiralty. Although the vessel sits in an area where the water is up to 500 feet deep and cannot be reached by anyone but the most experienced divers, Kennard and Scoville declined to give its exact location, saying only that it was found off the southern shore.

The sloop was discovered resting partially on its side, with two masts extending more than 70 feet above the lake bottom. “Usually when ships go down in big storms, they get beat up quite a bit. They don’t sink nice and square. This went down in a huge storm, and it still managed to stay intact,” Scoville said. “There are even two windows that aren’t broken. Just going down, the pressure difference, can break the windows. It’s a beautiful ship.”

Smith, who was shown underwater video of the find, said: “If it wasn’t for the zebra mussels, she looks like she only sunk last week.” The dark, cold freshwater acts as a perfect preservative, Smith said.

At that depth, there is no light and no oxygen to hasten decomposition, and little marine life to feed on the wood. The Ontario went down on Oct. 31, 1780, with a garrison of 60 British soldiers, a crew of about 40, mostly Canadians, and possibly about 30 American war prisoners.

The warship had been launched only five months earlier and was used to ferry troops and supplies along upstate New York’s frontier. Although it was the biggest British ship on the Great Lakes at the time, it never saw battle, Smith said.

Speaking From Inside The Egg

Biologists have known that shortly before hatching, crocodiles make noises within their eggs.

A new study, which involved playbacks of the pre-hatching calls, reveals these calls from the egg tell siblings it’s time to hatch and tell moms it’s time to uncover the nest.

Researchers Amélie Vergne and Nicolas Mathevon of the Jean Monnet University in France monitored Nile crocodile eggs that were due to hatch within 10 days.

The eggs were placed into one of three groups, for which the researchers either played recordings of pre-hatching calls, recordings of noise (other than the calls), or no sound.

The group of eggs that got a dose of real crocodile calls responded and moved, as the about finger-sized babies jostled about, more often than the “noise” eggs.

The eggs incubated in silence showed no movement.

All four of the individuals that successfully hatched in the crocodile-call group did so during or within 10 minutes of the playbacks.

The Methuselah Tree

Scientists have grown a tree from what may be the oldest seed ever germinated.

The new sapling was sprouted from a 2,000-year-old date palm excavated in Masada, the site of a cliff-side fortress in Israel where ancient Jews are said to have killed themselves to avoid capture by Roman invaders.

Dubbed the “Methuselah Tree” after the oldest person in the Bible, the new plant has been growing steadily, and after 26 months, the tree was nearly four-feet tall.

The species of tree, called the Judean date, is now extinct in Israel, but researchers are hoping that by reviving the plant they may be able to study its medicinal uses.

“The medicinal plants from this region are very important because they are historically mentioned in the Bible and the Koran,” said Sarah Sallon, director of the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center at the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem, which initiated the experiment to grow the tree as part of its Middle East Medicinal Plant Project. “The Judean date was very valuable and very famous, not just as a source of food but as a source of medicine,” Sallon said. “When I heard there were ancient seeds found in the archeological dig, I thought it would be interesting to see if we could try to grow them.”

Carbon dating of the seeds found at Masada revealed that they date from roughly the time of the ancient fortress’ siege, in A.D. 73.

The seeds were found in storage rooms, and appear to have been stockpiled for the Jews hiding out against the invading Romans.

An Elusive Kitten Stowaway

It was the stereotypical firefighters-try-to-rescue-cat story, but with a twist.

Firefighters from the South Florida city of Weston spent a sopping hour in pouring rain Tuesday trying to extract a kitten squeezed in the undercarriage of a stranger’s Volvo.

The crew tried jacking up the car and taking off a wheel, all for naught.

The feline ducked out of reach at each attempt to grab it.

At some point, the cat escaped undetected, prompting the crew to spend another hour peering in bushes and scouring a Walgreen’s parking lot.

They finally gave up and headed back to the station, answering at least two more calls on their way.

Five hours after the saga began, the elusive cat reappeared: At the station, in their fire truck’s rear wheel well.

This time, firefighters used chunks of meatloaf to try luring it out. It was un-enticed, so the crew resorted to an ultimately successful three-pronged strategy: One firefighter poked the feline in the backside with a Slim Jim, another used a hose to force it into an open compartment so a third person could pull it out.

The feline was dirty but unharmed.

An Amazing Underwater Find

Marine archaeologists will begin work in June to uncover the sand-buried hull of a 2,300 year-old cargo ship thought to have been ferrying wine from the Aegean island of Chios before it sank off Cyprus’ southern coast, researchers said Thursday.

The vessel, dating from the late Classical period (mid fourth century B.C.) is one of only a few such ships to have been found so well-preserved, said University of Cyprus visiting marine archaeologist Stella Demesticha.

“The shipwreck looks very promising about shedding light on the nautical and economic history of the period in the east Mediterranean,” Demesticha told the Associated Press on Thursday.

The wreck rests on the seabed at a depth of 144 feet some 1 1/2 miles off the island’s southern coast.

Demesticha said the wreck was also unique because it lies at a depth that divers can easily reach, unlike similar discoveries found in deeper waters.

Unreleased underwater photographs that researchers took of the vessel on initial surveying dives in November show a jumble of dozens of amphorae — clay urns used in antiquity to carry liquids and solid foodstuffs — lying on the seabed in the shape of the ship.

Demesticha said researchers believe the ship’s hull to be buried under tons of sand. The amphorae closely resemble others found to contain Chios wine, but may have been used to transport other goods in ancient sea trade.

The discovery could also provide more clues into Cyprus’s role in maritime trade during the last phases of the Cypriot city-kingdoms, researchers said.

Some Word Origins...

Geek: In the circus, a performer who sank sufficiently low would do horrible things (like biting the heads off live chickens) for booze money. The poor soul was called a geek. How it later came to describe smart people is unknown, but I am sure 80’s movies helped it along.

Two Cent’s Worth: During the Civil War, the cheapest cigar you could buy cost two pennies. “Two-center” cigars became synonymous with cheapness, and by the late 1800’s, people who wanted to project fauxhumility would offer their two cent’s worth.

Shoddy: A scandal erupted during the Civil War when some textilers sold the army uniforms made out of the scraps left over from their wool-making process. This cheap fabric was called shoddy. In no time, the noun turned into an adjective.

White Paper: In Victorian England, policy and legislation were delivered to Parliament in gigantic books with blue covers called Blue Papers. Lesser, shorter government business was delivered in smaller books with white covers, called White Papers.

Pundits: Brits who traveled to India met Hindi scholars who taught religion and law. They were knows as pandits. Soon enough, scholarly Londoners were known as pundits.

Kiosks: In Turkey, outdoor pavilions used for public meetings were called kiushks.

Haywire: In the 1800’s, New England loggers took bales of hay into the forest with them to feed their horses. These bales were bound with thin wire that was also used to make small repairs on the loggers’ equipment. The more that stuff broke, the more wire the loggers needed. Logging companies and groups of loggers that ended up using a lot of hay wire on their equipment, they were called haywire outfits. Slowly the term began to describe the actual process of the equipment breaking down and not working properly.

A Sea Turtle Migration Record

Scientists have long been tracking the migration of sea turtles as they work to protect them from extinction.

Their work, at times, has included tracking the migration patterns of individual turtles.

Recently, one leatherback sea turtle traveled 12,774 miles from Indonesia to Oregon, one of the longest recorded migrations of any vertebrate animal and a record for a sea turtle.

Leatherback sea turtles are the largest of all living turtles and are widely distributed throughout the world’s oceans.

They have been seen in the waters off Argentina, Tasmania, Alaska and Nova Scotia. Adult leatherbacks periodically migrate from their temperate foraging grounds to breeding grounds in the tropics.

Scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Service tracked one female nester, who was tagged on Jamursba-Medi beach in Papua, Indonesia, on her journey back to her foraging grounds off the coast of Oregon.

She was tracked for 647 days covering a distance about equal to two round trips between New York and Los Angeles.

The longest measured annual migration for any animal is the 40,000-mile journey between New Zealand and the North Pacific of the sooty shearwater puffin, a medium-sized seabird.

"Oh, It's The Alkylate's Fault..."

Experts are predicting pump prices, which jumped by almost a dollar a gallon in each of the last two springs in many parts of the United States, will spike again this year as refiners and gas stations switch from winter- to summer-blended fuels.

The increases, starting as early as February in southern California, could push the average national price to a record $3.50 a gallon or more by June. Prices in urban areas on each coast could approach $4 a gallon.

And the reason for the spring price shocks? Analysts say it’s linked to a shortage of alkylate, a little-known and expensive gasoline additive that some in the industry are calling “liquid gold.”

It has become a must-have ingredient since refiners stopped using MTBE two years ago when the potentially cancer-causing additive was found to be seeping into ground water.

The alkylate shortage has become the most important driver of summer gas prices, said Doug Leggate, an analyst at Citigroup Global Markets. “Supply of (alkylate) will set the price of summer gasoline — not inventory levels,” he said.

Oil companies deny they are purposely limiting production of alkylate, which like gasoline, jet fuel, and asphalt is a by-product of the oil refining process. But only recently have some started studying how they can boost output, and alkylate prices today are more than 15 percent higher than spot gasoline prices.

That means overall costs will jump when it is added in larger quantities to summer-blend fuels.

Without additives, gasoline doesn’t burn completely, increasing tailpipe air pollution. And untreated gas evaporates more quickly in hot weather, potentially causing vapor lock when it changes from a liquid to a gas and blocks fuel lines.

The federal government long ago required refiners to boost the oxygen content of summer-blend gasoline to make it burn more completely, a problem that was solved by adding MTBE and, more recently, ethanol.

But ethanol also has a high evaporation rate, so refiners increasingly have turned to alkylate, which Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J., calls the “magic bullet” in making summer gasoline.

A Purely Business Standpoint...

A woman’s online bid to find a rich husband in New York City caused an internet stir, but was then quickly withdrawn following a particularly business value-based response.

An anonymous 25 year-old woman was seeking advice on Craig’s list on how to find a male New York City resident that earned $500,000 a year.

“I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all,” wrote the woman, who described herself as “spectacularly beautiful” and “superficial”.

“I dated a business man who makes average around 200 -250. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. $250,000 won’t get me to Central Park West,” she said, asking questions like “where do rich single men hang out?”

A mystery banker, who said he fit the bill, offered the woman an analysis of her predicament - but described it as “plain and simple, a crappy business deal. Your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity ... in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!” the banker wrote.

“So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset,” he said. “Let me explain, you’re 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you! It doesn’t make good business sense to ‘buy you’ (which is what you’re asking) so I’d rather lease,” he said.

While the woman has since removed her posting from Craigslist, the ad and the response have become popular e-mail traffic both within and outside New York City where online dating has become commonplace.

Search For The "Dino-Killer"

We have all heard the prevailing theory that the dinosaurs were killed off by the impact of a colossal meteor slamming into Earth.

It is widely believed that the Chicxulub crater near Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula is the impact site of that meteor hit 65 million years ago.

It is also widely believed that another colossal meteor strike on our planet is a matter of “when” and not “if”.

Scientists have been running computer models to try to determine where this colossal meteorite came from to see if there might be a way to at least predict when or where the next strike will come from.

Their computer models have developed an interesting theory. They say the models show that 160 million years ago, two “mega-asteroids” in the asteroid belt collided, strewing debris across the solar system.

They believe that a fragment from one of these “mega-asteroids” eventually made its way to Earth 95 million years later, creating the impact on the Yucatan peninsula.

The models also show that debris from the same impact created the Tycho crater on our moon.

Scientists said that they worked backwards to reach this conclusion, looking at the masses of asteroids that they believe to have originated when the two “mega-asteroids”, one 37-miles wide and one 106-miles wide, slammed into each other and broke apart.

They applied a more modern theory that sunlight traveling through space can actually effect a small amount of force on an object over time.

With nothing but time, the asteroid debris was moved little by little until it finally came into the path of Earth’s orbit and gravitational pull.

Hackers Targeting By Name...

We are all aware that there is an entire underground army of hackers and phisers that are trying to scam us every time we even look at a computer, but we must also be very aware that they are continually becoming more brazen and crafty with each passing day.

MessageLabs, a security vendor that offers email filtering services to catch spam and malicious attachments reports that in May 2007, people in senior management positions received 10 emails per day, up from just 1 a year before.

10 emails might not seem like much, but it is the content of those emails that is alarming.

Many of the emails contained the name and title of the executive in the subject line, as well as a malicious Microsoft WORD document containing executable code.

The hackers are trying to trick the victim into thinking the email is from one of the top-level executives in the company, creating a false sense of security and an eagerness to quickly open the attachment before realizing that the email did not come from within the company.

The malicious code is most likely software the records and reports key-strokes, allowing hackers to obtain user names, passwords, and even top-secret company information.

Though MessageLabs would not divulge which large companies had been attacked in this manner, they did contact the individual executives involved and were told by those executives that their family members had also received emails with their name on it at their family members’ personal home email addresses.

An Underground Race

There is a race going on right now that very few of us have heard about. It is between two competing energy companies, one in Australia and one in Switzerland.

The competition is to be the first energy company in history to tap deep enough into the Earth’s core to use its heat to generate steam-based power on a commercial scale.

The energy companies hope to use a system of water pumps that send water down into the Earth’s depths, then bring it up once it is heated so that it can then drive steam-powered generators to make electricity.

These power companies hope that by using heat from the Earth itself, they can reduce reliance on fossil fuels and cut down on emissions.

There has been a set-back, however. “The glass vases on the shelf rattled, and there was a loud bang,” Catherine Wueest, a tea shop owner from the Swiss city of Basel, on the Rhine River, recalls. “I thought a truck had crashed into the building.”

It was not a truck, but in fact, the result of drilling by Geopower Basel that set off a magnitude 3.4 tremor. There have been several other, smaller tremors since December. So many, in fact, that the city has asked the power company to halt the project.

Scientists say that if we could tap just 40% of the geothermal heat below the United States, we could meet our annual energy demand 56,000 times over, eliminating entirely our dependence upon fossil fuels for energy production.

The obstacle, however, is the cost. It costs $1.4 million to drill a new oil well, but would cost about $7 million to drill each geothermal well.

Geothermal wells would also tap out an area’s heat energy in a couple of decades, needing to be re-drilled about every 20 years.

Then, of course, there is the problem that Basel Geopower is facing, which is earthquakes that might be set off by tapping into the Earth that far.

Basel Geopower is currently researching their options, but for now, drilling in Switzerland has stopped, giving the Australians time to take the lead.

Squirrel Rattlesnake Defenses

California squirrels, the little guys that we see around town sometimes and at all the turn-outs up and down the coast, have recently been discovered to have a very unique way of fending off rattlesnake attacks.

A little known fact about the California squirrel is that a full-grown, healthy squirrel can actually survive a rattlesnake bite with a developed immunity to the venom.

Small and weaker squirrels, however, can still succumb to the rattler attack.

To fight this vulnerability, a California squirrel, when faced with a rattler, can heat up its tail. The rattlesnake, which can sense infrared radiation from heat, takes the heated tail to mean that it has been discovered by the squirrel and has lost the element of surprise, causing the rattlesnake to just move on.

Researchers are not sure just how the squirrels cause their tails to heat up, but they think it may be by moving warm blood from the body core to the tail. They do know, however, thanks to some careful observations, that it is not a reflex, but a premeditated action.

Researchers have discovered that when the squirrels sense a gopher snake, they will vigorously move their tails, but will not heat them up like they do when they sense a rattlesnake.

They make the same tail movement with a rattler, but add the heated tail to their defense arsenal. Researchers also observed that the squirrels will make more vigorous tail movements and generate even more heat in their tails when they sense a rattlesnake during cooler night temperatures.

“Send In The Squirrels!"

“No, I had not heard about this, but it does not surprise me, foreign countries are always meddling in Iran,” said Hassan Mohmmadi, an Iranian fastfood vendor.

This was Mohmmadi’s response when he was told that the Islamic Republic News Agency was reporting that 14 squirrels had been captured by Iranian police near the Iranian border because they were found to have been equipped with eavesdropping devices.

Has the West finally run so far down on our list of options in dealing with a potential threat from the Iranian government that we have deployed our highly-skilled, agile, and possibly deadly squirrel special agents?

Do you think they won’t fall for that type of propaganda on the streets of Tehran? When asked where he thought the squirrels had come from, Hassan Mohmmadi didn’t miss a beat in replying, “I bet they were British squirrels, they are the most cunning.”

Maybe the reports are not that far off base. We used pigeons to carry intelligence out of Nazi-occupied France during World War II. We currently have chickens deployed in Kuwait to give us an early warning of chemical attacks. And, of course, we are using well-trained dolphins to help us locate underwater mines.

Don’t tell me that you cannot picture the scene in the melodramatic Tom Clancy knock-off movie where the CIA Director pounds his fist on his desk and exclaims, “Send in the squirrels!"

Toilet Paper Regulation

It has finally happened...technology is about to invade one of the most private spaces we occupy...the bathroom stall.

Sure, there have been technological advances since the outhouse, but none as intrusive as the new toilet paper dispenser from bathroom supply magnate Kimberly-Clark.

Sure, you’ve seen new toilet paper dispensers come and go, but I guarantee that you’ll take note of this one. One year in the making, this new electronic dispenser is going to limit you to taking just five sheets of toilet paper at a time.

That’s right, America, the number of toilet paper tissues that you are allowed to use at a time is about to be regulated by the evil corporations. Want proof that they are trying to oppress you? Here’s a quote from Kimberly-Clark’s director of washroom business, Richard Thorne. “Most people will take the amount given,” he says. “People generally will take what you give them.”

Let’s hope Overlord Thorne stays working at the toilet paper company and doesn’t run for office any time soon.

Apparently, Kimberly-Clark spent a good deal of time with focus groups and conducted a good deal of internal research to determine just how much toilet paper was the right amount for us to use.

They report that we gluttonous Americans use twice the toilet paper in a “sitting” as our European counterparts. While Americans are known to use 40 inches of toilet paper a pull, Kimberly-Clark feels that we should be using more like 20 inches, or five standard 4-inch squares. Their new machine can be adjusted to restrict us to a stingy 16 inches, or lavish us with a generous 24 inches, but either way, watch out America...your days of using 40 inches of toilet paper per pull in public restrooms may be numbered.

$2000 For 70 At 11% = $30M

If you put aside $2000 each year, beginning the year that your child is born, and keep that money invested in the stock market, at age 40, your child will be a millionaire, and at age 70, your child will have over $30 million. 

This is contingent upon the market’s past 70-year return of 11% on average repeating itself, but if you, then later, your child work on putting away and investing just $2000 per year each year, there might just be a $30 million nest egg as your child’s reward when they hit 70. 

Financial advisors recommend that you set up a trust that your child cannot touch, though, because your child will come into control of a $100,000 party fund on their 18th birthday. 

Of course, there is no guarantee that your child will not be just as frivolous with the nest egg at 40 or 50, but with your discipline and your child’s discipline, a fantastic retirement nest egg is possible.

Whale Survived 1890 Attack

Each year, under the supervision of the International Whaling Commission, 10 Alaskan villages are allowed to harvest 255 whales, which are still used as a major source of food for Alaska’s natives.

This year’s hunt revealed something absolutely amazing.

A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast had a 3 1/2 inch arrow-shaped projectile under its blubber that researchers dated back to 1890 through old manufacturing records.

These researchers believe that the arrow-shaped projectile was a bomb-lance cylinder used in whaling around 1890, and matches a similar find from a whale hunted in 1980.

Researchers place this bowhead at somewhere between 115 and 130 years old.

While this whale is an amazing find because of the rarity of whales this age, it is widely believed that some of the oldest bowhead whales live to be to nearly 200 years old.

We Didn't Need To Find Nemo...

The orange and white clownfish star of the hit cartoon movie “Finding Nemo” really is able to find his own way home after spending months at sea, an Australian-led team of international researchers said on Friday.

“When they are out in the open water they are actually quite sophisticated. They can swim well, they can smell, they can see, they can hear well, and they use a whole suite of senses,” joint team leader Glenn Almany told Reuters.

Studying a tiny coral reef in Papua New Guinea, the researchers found 60 percent of baby clownfish find their way back to their home reef - only 1,000 feet wide - after being swept into the open ocean at birth.

The fish were identified using a world-first tagging method in which adult clownfish and butterflyfish were injected with a harmless barium isotope which they then passed on to their offspring, allowing identification of their juveniles.

The finding, announced in the international journal Science, will help researchers understand the extent to which young fish return to their home area or go off to interbreed with more distant populations.

That in turn could help determine which populations needed protection or better management for sustainable fishing.

Almany said the team still had no idea how the clownfish knew which reef they came from, or how far they travelled in open sea during a journey lasting around 11 days.

“How they actually determine whether that reef is home or not is anyone’s guess, but as an educated guess I would say that there might be some sort of chemical imprinting going on when they are born,” he said.

The team of Australian, French and U.S. scientists, working out of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at Queensland’s James Cook University, planned follow up studies in Australia with larger fish species.

Tallest Man Saves Dolphins

The long arms of the world’s tallest man reached in and saved two dolphins by pulling out plastic from their stomachs.

The dolphins got sick after nibbling on plastic from the edge of their pool at an aquarium in Liaoning province, China.

Attempts to use surgical instruments to remove the plastic failed because the dolphins’ stomachs contracted in response to the instruments, the China Daily newspaper reported.

Veterinarians then decided to ask for help from Bao Xishun, a 7-foot-9 herdsman from Inner Mongolia with 41.7-inch arms, state media said. Bao, 54, was confirmed last year by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s tallest living man.

Chen Lujun, the manager of the Royal Jidi Ocean World Aquarium, told The Associated Press that the shape of the dolphins’ stomachs made it difficult to push an instrument very far in without hurting the animals.

People with shorter arms could not reach the plastic, he said. When we failed to get the objects out we sought the help of Bao Xishun from Inner Mongolia and he did it successfully yesterday,” Chen said. “The two dolphins are in very good condition now.”

Photographs showed the jaws of one of the dolphins being held back by towels so Bao could reach inside the animal without being bitten.

“Some very small plastic pieces are still left in the dolphins’ stomachs,” Zhu Xiaoling, a local doctor, told Xinhua. “However the dolphins will be able to digest these and are expected to recover soon.”

The Geneva Conventions...

The Geneva Conventions are a series of international treaties designed to lessen some of the horrors of warfare. They were first adopted over a century ago and expanded over the years. The conventions prohibit torture, the taking of hostages, mass deportations, summary executions, and other atrocities. The conventions state prisoners “shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, color, religion, or faith, sex, birth or wealth.” More than 190 nations, including the U.S. have signed on to follow the conventions.

The Geneva Conventions were created in 1859 by a Swiss businessman named Henri Dunant who, while seeking an audience with Napoleon II, witnessed horrible atrocities on the Battlefield of Solferino. On the Battlefied of Solferino, the Italian state of Piedmont was fighting the Austrians for independence. On a day where 40,000 men were killed or wounded, Dunant witnessed injured soldiers who were abandoned and left for dead in vast, stinking cesspools of vermin-infested filth and rotting bodies.

Dunant resolved to stop such misery from ever happening again and upon returning home, mobilized government officials, lawyers, and industrialists to convene a “Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field.”

The resulting treaty, signed in Geneva in 1864 by 12 nations, was the first to ever declare that injured or sick combatants must be cared for. For his efforts, Dunant shared in the first Nobel Peace Prize, in 1901.

The Second Geneva Convention, which was held in 1906, extended compassionate treatment to combatants at sea, not just those on the field.

The Third Geneva Convention, which was held in 1929, required that belligerents treat prisoners of war respectfully, supply information about their status to their nations of origin, and permit visits from representatives of neutral states.

Following the horrors of World War II, the Fourth Geneva Convention was convened in 1949 and it was declared that POWs must receive adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical treatment; have access to mail; and be allowed to worship as they please.

The treaty also specifies that prisoners cannot be used as human shields, forced into dangerous work, or subjected to medical experimentation. The signatory nations thought that in 1949, they had everything covered, but what was to come in the years of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the conflicts of the Middle East, was new type of warfare where combatants didn’t always wear uniforms and march under the flag of a sovereign nation, recognized by other nations of the world.

In 1977, the so-called Fifth Geneva Convention, amendments governing “wars of self-determination” and civil wars were added. Under these protocols, combatants are “obliged to distinguish themselves” from civilians and carry weapons openly. A captured fighter who fails to do so is not considered a POW under the treaty. In a contradiction, however, a combatant that does not identify him or herself as a combatants is still supposed to receive “protections equivalent in all respects” to those given to POWs.

The 1977 amendments also state that a combatant can be deemed a POW of fighting “against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes.”

So, why is the 1977 convention called the “so-called Fifth Geneva Convention? It is because only 160 nations, not the full 190 nations ratified the 1977 protocols.

Here in the U.S, we have only signed on the first four conventions and never agreed to follow the amendments of 1977. It is the current policy of the United States, and always has been the policy of the United States, to not classify combatants that are not in uniform, do not carry their weapons openly, or attack civilian targets, as POWs.

Though the current Bush White House seems to get the credit for making this policy, it was, in fact, solidified way back in 1977 under the Carter White House, when the U.S. did not ratify the so-called Fifth Geneva Convention. It is this policy under which captured terrorist are currently being classified as “unlawful combatants” as opposed to “POWs.”

Earthquake McGoon...

More than half a century after he died in the flaming crash of a CIA-owned cargo plane and became one of the first two Americans to die in combat in Vietnam, a legendary soldier of fortune known as "Earthquake McGoon" is finally coming home.

The skeletal remains of James B. McGovern Jr., discovered in an unmarked grave in remote northern Laos in 2002, were positively identified on Sept. 11 by laboratory experts at the U.S. military’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii.

The remains will be flown back to the mainland next week for a military funeral in New Jersey on Oct. 28, said McGovern’s nephew, James McGovern III, of Forked River, N.J.

"Bottom line, it’s closure for my family and a great feeling," McGovern said. Six feet and 260 pounds - huge for a fighter pilot - McGovern carved out a flying career during and after World War II that made him a legend in Asia. An American saloon owner in China dubbed him "Earthquake McGoon," after a hulking hillbilly character in the comic strip "Li’l Abner."

McGovern died on May 6, 1954, when his C-119 Flying Boxcar cargo plane was hit by ground fire while parachuting a howitzer to the besieged French garrison at Dien Bien Phu.

"Looks like this is it, son," McGovern radioed another pilot as his crippled plane staggered 75 miles into Laos, where it cartwheeled into a hillside. Killed along with "McGoon," 31, were his co-pilot, Wallace Buford, 28, and a French crew chief. Two cargo handlers, a Frenchman and a Thai, were thrown clear and survived.

Ho Chi Minh’s communist forces captured Dien Bien Phu the next day, ending a 57-day siege that had captured the world’s attention. It signaled the end of French colonial power in Indochina, and helped set the stage for the 15-year "American war" that ended with the fall of the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government in 1975.

Although civilians, the swashbuckling McGovern and Buford, an ex-World War II bomber pilot, were the first Americans to die in combat in the Asian country where war would later take nearly 60,000 American and more than a million Vietnamese lives.

It was no mystery in 1954 that the United States was supporting colonial France against Vietnam’s communist-led rebellion, and "McGoon" was already famous for his exploits when he was killed. The only secret was that his employer, a charter airline called Civil Air Transport, or CAT, "was owned by the CIA - lock, stock and barrel," Felix Smith, a retired CAT pilot and McGovern friend, said in an interview in 2002.

It was not until the 1990s that the CIA-CAT connection was finally declassified.

The CIA is arranging for James McGovern III to fly to Hickam Air Force Base near Honolulu and escort his uncle’s remains home, he said. The CIA did not immediately return a call for comment.

Dr. Thomas Holland, director of JPAC’s Central Identification Laboratory, said McGovern was only the second person ever identified through "nuclear" DNA from a male relative - a particularly difficult task with bones that are decades old. The first was another Southeast Asia casualty identified recently.

Most cases rely on mitochondrial DNA, from female relatives.

McGovern first went to China in 1944, as a fighter pilot in the 14th Air Force’s "Tiger Shark" squadron, descended from the famous Flying Tigers. According to Smith, he was credited with shooting down four Japanese Zero fighter planes and destroying five on the ground.

At war’s end in 1945, McGovern signed on with CAT, which was under contract to Chiang Kai-Shek’s Chinese Nationalist regime, then fighting a civil war against Mao Zedong’s communists. Captured by communist troops after a forced landing, "McGoon" was freed six months later. Colleagues joked that his captors simply got tired of feeding him.

CAT moved to Taiwan after Chiang’s 1949 defeat. In 1950 it was secretly acquired by the CIA, and continued to fly commercially as a cover for clandestine activities. Three years later it was detailed by the Eisenhower administration to Indochina, flying supply missions for the French with its planes’ insignia painted out.

Ultimately, CAT morphed into Air America, the "CIA airline" that operated in Laos and South Vietnam during America’s Vietnam War.

McGovern’s exact fate was unknown until a French visitor learned of the crash during a 1959 visit to the Laotian village of Ban Sot. That report was suppressed by the CIA, Smith said, but after a private historian found it in French files years later, a group of former CAT pilots led by Smith persuaded the CIA to back a search effort.

In 1997, an American MIA team investigating an unrelated case found a C-119 propeller at Ban Sot, and a JPAC photo analyst spotted possible graves in aerial photos. Excavation in 2002 uncovered remains that turned out to be McGovern’s.

JPAC experts are still seeking the remains of co-pilot Buford, one of 35 civilians among 1,797 Americans still unaccounted for in Indochina.

James McGovern III said his namesake uncle will be buried with military honors in Basking Ridge, next to his brother John, a former sportswriter who died in 2001.

James McGovern III said that as a Purple Heart recipient in World War II, his father was eligible for burial at Arlington National Cemetery, but had expressed hope of one day lying next to his long-lost brother. "All those years were enough of a separation," James III said.

Credit Card Companies Want You To Take Another Card

I have always done my best to inform you about the latest scams and schemes by the credit card companies to keep "revolvers" revolving and to get the "deadbeats" revolving.

Remember, "revolvers" are people who carry credit card balances on these revolving lines that are bread and butter to credit card companies, while "deadbeats" are the people who don’t carry a balance, thus robbing the credit card companies of interest charges and fees.

Well, I just finished reading an article in BusinessWeek about our good friends at Capital One and their latest round of trickery. I hope my warning will catch you before you fall victim to their latest trick.

I must begin by pointing out two important changes in the credit card industry.

There was a time when once you had a Capital One credit card, you were no longer a potential customer for a Capital One credit card. They made their money off of the interest that you paid on the card and then received bonus income when you went over the limit or were not able to make the minimum payment. And if you needed additional credit, you asked for an increase on your credit card’s limit.

While Capital One loves to get your interest charges, today, the majority of its money comes from what used to be the occasional bonus...the overlimit fees and late fees.

As the spending and credit habits of consumers have evolved to be less and less responsible, the credit card companies have adapted to take advantage. There is change number one...credit card companies today make more money from the fees than they do from the interest they charge on the loans.

On to change number two. If you have a Capital One credit card, you may notice that you still receive applications in the mail from Capital One, and you probably think that this is just some mail list error and that if you send in the application, they will tell you that you already have a Capital One credit card and apologize for the confusion, but this is actually not the case.

What many American consumers do not realize is that these Capital One applications are the result of a new capital idea from Capital One. Don’t increase credit limits...issue more than one card to each consumer. If you have a "revolver" who is at the limit and paying late fees and overlimit fees, chances are, that "revolver" is going to open up a new credit card to borrow against to pay those fees, and once that second card is maxed, then open up a third, then a fourth, and so on, just to pay the fees on their cards until their miracle happens and all the sudden they can somehow pay off this credit card debt that they have accumulated on all these different cards...so why don’t we, as Capital One, make sure that each of those credit cards that are maxed out and wracking up fees is a Capital One card?

Don’t give the consumer one card with a $1400 limit and collect one set of fees, issue that consumer two cards with $700 limits and literally double our income by collecting two sets of fees.

So, there is change number two. Capital One no longer will say, "Sorry, you already have a credit line with us and you’re not doing so good with it so we can’t increase your credit limit," but in fact, will now say, "Thank you very much for maxing out your card, please, have another!"

And so began a new chapter in credit card history. Capital One would wait until you maxed out card #1, hit you with fees, then send you an application for card #2 so that you’d cash advance that baby to pay for card #1, borrowing at a higher interest rate on card #2 than on card #1, thus maxing out card #2 at an even faster rate.

Naturally, when you’d maxed out card #2, the applications for card #3 were already in your mailbox. Once you were at card #3 or #4, you just kept sending in the applications, just hoping they’d allow you a card #5 or card #6 just so you could keep your head above water.

Of course, the using one card to pay the other wasn’t new, just now, all these cards were from the same bank. The article I just read told the story of some folks that had as many as six Capital One cards, each with a ridiculously low credit line of $200 to $700, some of them paying a much as $400 per month in fees alone.

Again, I go back to personal responsibility and must say that Capital One discloses all of the fees that you will be charged when you apply for a card when they issue it and tell you up front what will happen when you max it out.

Every step along the way, they let consumers know on the statements and in the terms pamphlets what they will do when consumers get to and go over the limit, so we, as consumers, know up front how things will be and then we, as consumers, agree to these horrific loan terms.

What most American consumers fail to realize, but must begin to understand, however, is that these credit card companies pay a lot of very smart people to analyze us as a group to determine the best way to get us to run up credit card debt, and then, determine the best way to make money off of that debt once it has been created.

I am not saying that you can’t beat the credit card companies, because each of us knows full-well that we could have a credit card in our pocket and just not use it, thus avoiding self-perpetuating debt, but we must be aware of the forces that are working against us to get our dollars and to break our banks.

We have to be aware of these forces, know that they are working against us, and remind ourselves of it every single day. It is not easy to do, but it is much easier to remind yourself not to charge today than to get out of credit card debt tomorrow.

I have said it before and I will say it again, please do not carry credit card balances in any situation other than a dire emergency. Say, a root canal or a co-pay on a surgery that saves your life, as opposed to a new TV that is better than the one you bought two years ago, or the cell phone that is better than the cell phone you already have.

The article in BusinessWeek touched on the need for federal regulators to step in and stop this multiple-card-issuing practice, but we cannot expect the "powers that be" to protect us from credit card companies.

It’s not the government’s job...it is our job to police our spending habits ourselves...

U.S. Marine Courage On 9/11...

For years, authorities wondered about the identity of a U.S. Marine who appeared at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, helped find a pair of police officers buried in the rubble, then vanished.

Even the producers of the new film chronicling the rescue, “World Trade Center,” couldn’t locate the mystery serviceman, who had given his name only as Sgt. Thomas. The puzzle was finally solved when one Jason Thomas, of Columbus, Ohio, saw a TV commercial for the new movie a few weeks ago as he relaxed on his couch.

His eyes widened as he saw two Marines with flashlights, hunting for survivors atop the smoldering ruins. “That’s us. That’s me!” thought Thomas, who lived in Long Island during the attacks and now works as an officer in Ohio’s Supreme Court.

Thomas, 32, hesitantly re-emerged last week to recount the role he played in the rescue of Port Authority police officers Will Jimeno and Sgt. John McLoughlin, who were entombed beneath 20 feet of debris when the twin towers collapsed.

Back in New York to speak of his experience and visit family, Thomas provided the AP with photographs of himself at ground zero. As further proof of his identity, the movie’s producer, Michael Shamberg, said Thomas and Jimeno have spoken by phone and shared details only the two of them would know.

Thomas, who had been out of the Marine Corps about a year, was dropping his daughter off at his mother’s Long Island home when she told him planes had struck the towers. He retrieved his Marine uniform from his truck, sped to Manhattan and had just parked his car when one of the towers collapsed. Thomas ran toward the center of the ash cloud.

“Someone needed help. It didn’t matter who,” he said. “I didn’t even have a plan. But I have all this training as a Marine, and all I could think was, ‘My city is in need.”’

Thomas bumped into another ex-Marine, Staff Sgt. David Karnes, and the pair decided to search for survivors. Carrying little more than flashlights and an infantryman’s shovel, they climbed the mountain of debris, skirting dangerous crevasses and shards of red-hot metal, calling out “Is anyone down there? United States Marines!”

It was dark before they heard a response. The two crawled into a deep pit to find McLoughlin and Jimeno, injured but alive. Jimeno would spend 13 hours in the pit before he was pulled free. Thomas stayed long enough to see him come up, but left due to exhaustion before McLoughlin, who remained pinned for another nine hours, was retrieved.

Thomas said he returned to ground zero every day for another 2 1/2 weeks to pitch in, then walked away and tried to forget. “I didn’t want to relive what took place that day,” he said.

Shamberg said he apologized to Thomas for an inaccuracy in the film: Thomas is black, but the actor cast to portray him, William Mapother, is white. Filmmakers realized the mistake only after production had begun, Shamberg said.

Thomas laughed and gently chided the filmmakers, then politely declined to discuss it further. “I don’t want to shed any negativity on what they were trying to show,” he said. As for his story, Thomas said he is gradually becoming more comfortable telling it. “It’s been like therapy,” he said.

Non-U.S. Revenue Percentages...

One of the most important aspects of investing your hard-earned dollars is to ensure that you are diversified to guard against fluctuations in sectors of your portfolio that may be overweighted, such as what happened to a lot of people in 1999 when they were overweighted in tech and what happened to people at Enron who were way overweighted in their own company stock.

It pays to do a little digging because things may not always be as they seem.

For instance, you may be invested in a U.S.-based company thinking that you have covered the U.S. portion of your portfolio, when in fact, most of that company’s revenue is coming from more unstable foreign sources.

Below, find the 15 largest U.S. firms and the percentage of their non-U.S. revenue...

Intel - 80%
ExxonMobil - 75%
Coca-Cola - 70%
Chevron - 63%
IBM - 63%
Altria Group - 62%
Proctor & Gamble - 53%
Cisco Systems - 50%
AIG - 44%
Pfizer - 43%
General Electric - 41%
Johnson & Johnson - 41%
PepsiCo - 36%
Dell - 33%
Microsoft - 32%

A Little History Of Actual "Monopolies"...

In 1911, at the Justice Department’s request, the U.S. Supreme Court broke up John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly, which began in 1870. It was split into 33 companies, including Jersey Standard (Exxon), Socony (Mobil), and Socal (Chevron).

In 1945, a federal appeals court found that Alcoa had illegally maintained its monopoly over aluminum ingot production, which began in 1888. The company was not broken up, but the government strengthened competition by selling its own wartime plants to Kaiser and Reynolds.

On January 8, 1981, after 13 years of litigation, the Justice Department dropped its effort to break up IBM for allegedly monopolizing the computer industry.

Also on January 8, 1981, AT&T signed a consent decree with the Justice Department ending Ma-Bell’s century-long telephone monopoly. It agreed to divest its 22 local operating companies, which were then recognized as the seven Baby Bells.

In June 2000, a federal judge found that Microsoft had illegally maintained its monopoly on PC operating systems and ordered the company split in two. A year later, however, portions of the ruling were overturned, and Microsoft then settled, avoiding a breakup.

Your Tax Dollars At Work...

With such a big debate constantly raging about who tax cuts benefit and how much things like the War on Terror or Katrina Relief cost, I think we as Americans fail to look at, analyze, and complain about how much of our tax money is wasted on the smaller, day to day projects that add up to far more money than any of these single-ticket large budget items.

The Department of the Interior spent $63,000,000 to consolidate 16 financial systems into one, but the project has failed and will be restarted from square one.

The Department of Homeland Security spent $104,000,000 on an infrastructure upgrade that did not meet federal law requirements.

The Department of Defense has spent $264,000,000 on their online travel booking system, a project that is currently four years behind schedule.

The FBI spent $170,000,000 on a web-based case management system that has failed to work properly and is also being restarted from square one.

The Transportation Security Administration spent $834,000,000 on their infrastructure modernization, but the project has never yielded the results they were looking for, and they, too, are starting over.

And lastly, our friends at the Federal Aviation Administration have spent $11,400,000,000 (yes, $11.4 billion) on 16 separate improvement projects, 12 of which are behind schedule, and one of which is currently 13 years behind schedule.

What A Real Bender Might Look Like

Life With The Clintons...

Bill Clinton will clear all future public-policy statements with his wife.

Senator Hillary Clinton was embarrassed last month by reports that her husband was advising the United Arab Emirates at the same time she was denouncing a ports deal involving a Dubai-owned company.

Now the couple has agreed that Hillary will get "the final say" over what Bill says and does, sources told the New York Daily News.

"He knows it’s Hillary’s time now," said an advisor close to both politicians.

A spokesman for Bill Clinton said that with Hillary preparing for a 2008 presidential run, the former president is willing to do "anything he can" to help - including, presumably, keeping quiet.

A Health Warning About Food & Plastics...

I have long been very concerned about the mixture of food and plastics. Just the other night I saw a commercial for plastic crock-pot liners that keep the pot clean while you simmer food for hours on end that made me think about how dangerous a combination hot plastics and food can be.

I find it very hard to believe that a plastic bag next to a heat source will not release chemicals into the food that it is holding. Then, this week, I received an email that addressed that very issue.

I must admit I was not surprised about heat and plastics, but I was surprised about cold and plastics. The email talks about the dangers of warming and freezing food and drinks in plastic containers.

Studies at Johns Hopkins are now showing that cancer-causing dioxins in the plastic containers that we use each and every day are seeping into food when it is being heated.

Dioxins are absorbed, eaten and then begin poisoning your body’s cells, leading to the development of cancer.

Johns Hopkins recommends the following:
1. DO NOT put plastic containers, even so-called "microwaveable" containers, in the microwave. Dioxins can seep into your food while it and the plastic container are being heated.
2. DO NOT put plastic water bottles in the freezer. Dioxins seep into the water as the water freezes.
3. DO NOT use plastic wrap in the microwave. Dioxins seep into your food when the plastic wrap is heated.